Board Thread:Lore Discussion/@comment-2165692-20161018043733/@comment-30426281-20161109035150

Blademaster Jauffre wrote:

Please, give one good reason why Naafahlaar would change his name, if such a thing is even possible for a Dragon. Since I was a bit late to reply, I'll pay interest and give you two.

Nahfalaar was a coward who hid behind mortals for protection. When his lord was terminated, he ran away. Since he did pretty much nothing but hide, he could have taken on a different name because those are usually part of the hiding package.

Furthermore, dragons' real names have power over them - note that Call Dragon & Summon Durnehviir both use the dragon's name and both are distinctly un-hide-from-able - and simply claiming a different name would partially protect a dragon from other dragons or Dragonborn until they figured out what the real one was.

But Nahfalaar doesn't even need to willfully change his name, if the people of 500 years later either don't recognize him or simply don't remember his weird foreign dragon name clearly because he hasn't been seen and it hasn't been spoken in more time than some nations have existed.

And then when the new name is written in history, folks of generations hence will not immediately know they are the same dragon, as neither identity was a major figure in history, most people are not psychic, and Tamriel does not have Internet.

Blademaster Jauffre wrote:

Also, last seen 500 years prior to the events of Redguard does in fact prove that it wasn't Nahfalaar, Nafalilargus was seen during the Battle of Hunding Bay You see, my boy, there's this thing called perspective, the point from which an observation is made. It separates objective facts of reality and universal canon from presumptions made by characters.

For instance, as I've said, the people of 500 years later are unlikely to recognize the same dragon if he doesn't identify himself as the same dragon, thus so far as they know, Naafahlaar was "never seen again".

I've already given the reasons why Nahfaalar would benefit from accepting a new identity.