Guild Wars 2

Why do so many humans in GW2 have English-inspired names? Kasmeer Meade, Marjory and Belinda Jane Delaqua, Ela Makkay, et cetera et cetera.

AFAIK, the ethnic majority in Kryta is vaguely Mediterranean (Krytans) – Saul d’Alessio, queen Salma etc. Ascalonians (who are the most English people in the game) are a minority, on par with people from Cantha and Elona, and Ela Makkay and the Delaquas are not even from there. Sure, there could be some cross-cultural exchange, but still it does not make sense for English names to be dominant. If anything, Italian or Spanish should have been more common.

The cultural heritages of Kryta and Ascalon were never really tightly defined in GW1. Kryta was vaguely Mediterranean, while Ascalon was equally vaguely based on Germanic (including English) and Slavic influences.

That said, I wouldn’t say that people of Ascalonian descent are a minority in Kryta, except in the strictest definition of ‘minority’ – certainly not on the level of Canthans and Elonians. The refugees from the other continents are basically those who found the new administrations there intolerable and who were able to escape before clampdowns – Ascalonians are probably the only group where a substantial portion of the remaining population moved. Certainly, we see a lot more of Ascalon than Elona within Kryta, and the Canthan presence is all but invisible. Meanwhile, ethnic Krytans probably got hit a lot harder by the Great Tsunami – in GW1, most of the heaviest populated parts of Kryta were areas that do not appear to be part of Kryta at all nowadays. Ethnic Krytans are probably still in the majority, but we’re probably looking at something on the order of 50/35/10/5 of Krytans/Ascalonians/Elonians/Canthans, enough for the Ascalonians to have a significant influence. There does seem to be some evidence of Ascalonian influences having been fashionable at some point in Kryta’s past – a lot of the architecture owes more to Ascalonian than GW1 Krytan architecture, and it’s likely that the heroics of certain Ascalonians during the civil war lead to a lot of children in subsequent years being given Ascalonian names. (I also have a suspicion that there may be a disproportionate number of Ascalonian noble families – partly because Ascalonian social structure wasn’t turned upside down for nearly a decade by the White Mantle, and partly due to patents of nobility issues as rewards for the aforementioned heroics).

To be honest, I find the Delaqua family name more eyebrow-raising, since they ARE supposed to have Canthan heritage. I guess at some point there was a marriage with a non-Canthan and the non-Canthan family name was the one that was kept.

Ascalonians are probably almost as much of a majority as Krytans as I see it. It’s the Elonians and especially Canthan and Orrian (whom are nearly non-existent) that are in the minority.

Aside from drax’s mention of the Great Tsunami dealing a lot of damage to Krytans (not to mention the Krytan Civil War that effectively lasted 16 years from 1072 to 1088 AE – though the worst of it was in 1079 AE), there’s the fact that Ascalonians had the Ascalon Settlement to regrow in numbers since 1072 AE, whereas other refugee communities had nothing until Divinity’s Reach.

Given drax skips Orrians, I’d probably argue something closer a percentage of 45/35/10/5/5 (K/A/E/C/O)- while we only have one Orrian-descent person openly proclaiming such, it’s known that they keep their heritage on the downside, so they’re probably as common as the very rare Canthan family we see on occasion.