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There exist a fictional nation called Elf Nation. (not a creative name but this is for a grammar experiment)

The species which inhabit this nation are called elf(singular) and elves (plural).

Would the nationality of this nation be capitalized?

For example, in the real world, we would refer to a citizen of a nation as: American citizen or British citizen or Russian citizen and so on. We would capitalize the nationality and not the profession. More examples: Japanese writer, Chinese professor.

What if the adjective of our nation's citizens is the same as the species name. Would we capitalize the adjective then? Example from the real world: human astronaut, not Human astronaut

So, would we refer to a general of this fictional nation Elf Nation as: elf general or Elf general?

Also, would it be elf culture or Elf culture, seeing that we use human culture and not Human culture?

I know you could just make up a separate adjective in this case and a separate adjective already exists for this species. My question is mostly about if and when can you mix nationality and species if they are fundamentally the same.

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  • Tolkien contrasted Dwarves (along with Hobbits and Men, the mortals in his fictional-but-with-strong-connections-to-reality world) with dwarfs, as usually defined. You can check whether he ever lower-cased elvish.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Jun 25, 2021 at 14:22
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    There is a discussion on the choices Tolkien made at Tolkien's capitalisation of races ... elf, dwarf, orc on Scifi.SE.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Jun 25, 2021 at 14:27
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    You have two different things, Elves as the citizens of Elf Nation and elves as the race. I don't see why you shouldn't use use capitalization or not depending on whether you're using it for the nationality or the race. (And for all you know, some dwarfs may be citizens of Elf Nation.) We use Earth when we're talking about the planet and earth when we're talking about soil, and it doesn't seem to confuse anybody.
    – Peter Shor
    Commented Jun 25, 2021 at 14:29
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    In 'The Dwarf Lords', 'Dwarf' is certainly used as an appositive noun rather than an adjective. The word 'dwarf' is a difficult one to analyse, since it exists as an adjective also ('dwarfer forms of citrus').
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Jun 25, 2021 at 14:59
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    @PeterShor: According to this NGram chart, until a decade or two ago it was pretty much the toss of a coin between earthlings and Earthlings. But the capitalised version is now more than twice as common. Are our (human) writers perhaps becoming more proud of their species, as astronomers continue to gather evidence that there might be other intelligent life forms out there?
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Jun 25, 2021 at 17:09

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When we talk about Earth as a planet (part of the Earth-Moon system), we capitalize it. When we talk about earth meaning soil, we don't. The same rules should hold for Elf/elf.

You have two different meanings of the word here. There are Elves who are citizens of Elf Nation and there is the race of elves. And for all you know, there may be dwarfs who are citizens of Elf Nation, and elves who are citizens of Ruritania, so these two concepts don't cover the same set of people.

I don't see why you shouldn't use use capitalization or not depending on whether you're using it for the nationality or the race. It will make sentences like "that dwarf is an Elf" much less confusing.

So if you say somebody is an Elf general, you mean that he is a general in the army of Elf Nation, not that he is an elf. (Of course, this ambiguity could be resolved by using elven for generals who are elves.)

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  • I see... so when referring to a position appointed by the nation that is not inherent to the elf species, I should capitalize, on the other hand when I'm talking about the elf as a race (for example elf anatomy), I should not capitalize
    – Ge To
    Commented Jun 25, 2021 at 14:38

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