Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-26872804-20150815160415/@comment-26893431-20150919115305

Draevan13 wrote: Breton names are French sounding (Pierre, Francois, Emmanuel, etc) whereas Nord names are Scandinavian sounding (Voljar, Ulfric, Torygg, etc) and the last name is often two names joined by a hyphen (Banner-Torn, Shatter-Shield, Lonely-Gale etc).

Names in TES will often give you the person's race (though not always, Brand-Shei for example). Maybe his father was a Nord, and therfor was named Hjalti, but in TES universe you are the race of your mother, which could make the difference.