From a Nord perspective, they would probably call them dark/high/wood elves. Typically only the mer themselves use their names like dunmer/bosmer/altmer. So it fits the game that they be called dark/high/wood elves.

Besides, you can always go into the construction set and edit the name of the race (not the race ID, just the display name)

IIRC Morrowind and Oblivion used both. They're creating a culture, and a realistic world. Not everything is going to be called by one name.

That's like saying do you want Hobbits or Halflings in LOTR. They are called by both names, depends who you ask.

I think game developers always rip their races off by not calling them by their lore correct, in game titles. Like with TES I think only very rarely are they called elves, always something-mer. Same goes in WoW, character creation calls forsaken Undead. Call them by what they actually are in game

It's a "man" dominated province, so it should be the names man calls them by in the character creation and manuals and such.

In the game Mer should refer to themselves and each other by their Mer names, and Man should refer to them as the names Man has given them.

The Mer-folk should call themselves just that, and the biggoted imperials and Nords will call them elves.

Both. As they always have been.

And what is better - human or людина? Just same words in different languages. They should both stay

I like both.

DON'T MAKE ME CHOOSE!!!!

The way I see it is calling them "elf" in human provinces and "-mer" in elven provinces. I just tend to think of human races calling them elf and the elves calling themselves -mer, so it kind of makes sense. I can't confirm that though, I mean in Morrowind they were called elf in the race selection screen and that is set in an elven province, although you were brought there by imperials which could have something to do with it.

But personally I prefer the -mer names as they're more original and just seems cooler overall.

Voted for the -mer option. Much prefer it.

I don't mind if some [censored] Nord calls me an Elf while playing my Dunmer but around other Dunmer I expect the proper name to be used.

Something like that.

Elves for everyone. The concept of mer may have been mostly abandoned even among mer themselves as time progressed, and they adopted the human word for it rather than their own. Like "mer" was a part of their language back in the days. Maybe "mer" was used in a racist way by the non mer, and elves was chosen for being more "correct"? Like here where it is considered degrading using the word negro, and have to use african american instead (probably not 100% correct but you get the idea). Pippi Longstocking got that treatment here, where "negerkonge" (eng: king of negroes) was rewritten as (and I'm actually not kidding!) "sydhavskonge" (eng: king of southern ocean/king of southernly island), in order to "modernize the language" (still copyrighted art of literature).

I'm not a "lore master", but to me they can do pretty much anything they want without *breaking* anything. As seen above, they can even rewrite older scripts, "modernizing" to Elves, and have a (lame) excuse for doing it. Time progresses on other planets too, and sometimes common sense goes down the drain in due time as well

I don't really care, but I would personally prefer "-mer".

myrrh, which I am re-gifting, 'cause who needs myrrh?

It depends on what race speaks about them.
The -mer names are how the elves call themselves.
But people from non elf races like kajhits call them just high or dark or wood elves.
I guess elves should call one another -mer while others should call elves -elf.

I'd prefer the races during character creation to be listed as elves - technically the western name is the tradition in the series, and being in a province of Nords who hate elves like no other I could imagine them being quick to use the general term. I think the merish names work better within the lore, but calling them elves initially helps give the game a nice, classic DnD feel. Even with Skyrim's radical changes, I'd still argue TES is still one of the most traditional and DnD like western RPGs on the market.

Actual mer will have more dignity than this of course, and when they aren't arguing over the purity of their separate races I'd expect them to use the mer names.