"Mothername, fathername, some people choose a third. Houses follow whichever parent is more politically important which is almost always the father because socially conservative, but my father calls himself his mother's son in formal contexts."

"...Okay, so the way it works for us is that one or the other parent or both together whatever it doesn't really matter picks a given name--Imliss and Idaia in our cases--and then the kid gets the mother's motherline name and the father's fatherline name. Our mother's name was Sarlassa Zavari Geressin and our father's name was Erichen Eizar Lessnerai. We're both girls and would pass on the motherline name, so if anyone's referring to us as being from one or the other family it's more likely the Zavaris."

"Okay, good to know. We list the one we're affiliating with last, so you might change the order with people you don't have time to explain the whole thing to."

"...Weird. Okay, that'd probably be confusing for a while. It'd probably be worth keeping it the same way if we expected to use the same naming structure for any kids we were going to have, since they might be sons who wouldn't be using Zaravi primarily, but that seems unlikely to say the least."

"I'm Tyelcormo with everyone who knows me, but I'm Prince Turkafinwe because that's my fathername and it's through my father I'm prince anything. There are stupid social rules - like, Maitimo tells everyone to call him Maitimo but everyone in fact still calls him Prince Nelyafinwe, you're supposed to wait for someone to insist on familiarity. I cannot stand them or people who take them seriously."

"...So should we in fact call him Maitimo, or...?"

"You're family now so you can. But, like, if you're talking with a random person in Tirion, and you say 'Maitimo said -', you're very forcefully saying 'the prince-who-I-am-on-intimate-terms-with said', if that makes any sense which it shouldn't because it's stupid."

"It makes sense. Maybe if I'm too busy learning things I can avoid having to deal with ridiculous social structures."

"That's how my father does it!"

"Sensible of him!"

"I very much admire him for it!"

"What's your mom like?"

"Ridiculously talented, much better at reading people than my dad, patient. Very patient. Too patient for me, personally."

"What does that mean?"

"Like, about the Valar not letting anyone leave Valinor - 'be patient, they'll come around'. About our cousins trying to get us disowned, 'be patient, they'll calm down'. About the social conservativism, too."

"Oh, the kind of patient that wants other people to be patient too. Makes sense."

"And who thinks that if a problem will be solved eventually then it doesn't make sense to be angry about it now, or to do anything extreme about it. I love my mom, but I don't want things to work out eventually, I want them now."

"Exactly! If something's hurting people now you can't just say it's okay because it's going to stop someday."

"Well, you can hesitate to cause hurt to fix it. I do get that perspective. But also I get very, um, impatient with it."

"Yeah, there's a difference between, 'it's not worth it to try to fix it immediately' and 'it's okay'."

"Well, I think we mostly just disagree about which things are worth it to try to fix immediately because of how much we differ in how reassured we are by the knowledge they'll be all right eventually."

"Fair enough."

"She's ridiculously talented, though. You'll be in awe of her scupltures."

"Can't wait."

Tirion-ward! They're getting quite good at both Quenya and mental separating. And Idaia is lovely and glorious and his.