Something has been bugging me about the various gods' demon names
So we know since the game's launch that almost all the gods in Teyvat shares their names with demons from the *Ars Goetia*. Some of these gods use personal names to hide their demon names (e.g.: Barbatos = Venti; Morax = Zhongli; etc), while others just use their demon names casually (Havria, Orobashi, etc), and there are a few gods whose demon names - if they ever had any - are currently unknown both in and out of universe (Nabu Malitaka, Egeria, Remus, etc).
But I've been wondering about how the whole demon name system works. Namely:
1. whether demon names are assigned by Celestia to those who achieved godhood, or;
2. if the gods were just born with their demon names.
Obviously, both options can't be true simultaneously. Yet some evidence in-lore suggests they can also be both true simultaneously, which is what got me wondering about how the whole system works. I don't know if Option 1 applies to every god, but I think Option 2 very likely DON'T apply to the following, with explanations:
* Focalors - We know all Oceanids including Egeria by a technicality are named after nymphs from Greek Mythology, but Focalors breaks this naming convention. Even if you count Furina as a part of her, she still doesn't follow the Oceanids' naming convention by being named after a minor Roman goddess instead. Why would Focalors be the sole exception to her species' naming convention, even if her ascension to godhood was somehow predicted centuries before it happened?
* Nabu Malitaka and the Lord of the Night - both are formerly angels who, while treated as gods in their respective nations, NEVER referred to themselves as such. And as the LotN explicitly spell it out in Natlan's Archon Quest, angels are a whole different category of beings from gods. This, incidentally, also made it highly unlikely for Option 1 to be true for them, as they were both stripped of their angel statuses by Celestia as punishment and thus would never be granted demon names.
* Venessa - she is canonically the first ever Vision Holder to ascend to full godhood, and this is exactly why Option 2 can't possibly apply to her.
* All Pyro Archons - obviously, Mavuika isn't born with Harborym as her name in both of her lifetimes. This applies to every Pyro Archons as unlike other Archons, they are all humans who won the Pyro Gnosis via fighting prowess. So Option 2 definitely don't apply to them.
* Zhongli - he was an adeptus before he became the Geo Archon. So surely he must've had an adeptus title in the same vein as Moon Carver and Cloud Retainer before ascending to godhood? This makes him a proof for Option 1.
* Venti - the reveal of Zibai being one of Istaroth's "children" and thus Venti's "sibling" made me think that perhaps Venti wasn't born with Barbatos as his name, after all, making him another proof for Option 1.
* The Moon Sisters - all three of them are born long before the First Descender arrived on Teyvat. So both options don't apply to them.
* Columbina - As Nod-Krai's Archon Quest explicitly spells it out, she was literally born without any names to identify herself as, so both options don't apply to her either.
That's all I can think of so far. What do you think?
But I've been wondering about how the whole demon name system works. Namely:
1. whether demon names are assigned by Celestia to those who achieved godhood, or;
2. if the gods were just born with their demon names.
Obviously, both options can't be true simultaneously. Yet some evidence in-lore suggests they can also be both true simultaneously, which is what got me wondering about how the whole system works. I don't know if Option 1 applies to every god, but I think Option 2 very likely DON'T apply to the following, with explanations:
* Focalors - We know all Oceanids including Egeria by a technicality are named after nymphs from Greek Mythology, but Focalors breaks this naming convention. Even if you count Furina as a part of her, she still doesn't follow the Oceanids' naming convention by being named after a minor Roman goddess instead. Why would Focalors be the sole exception to her species' naming convention, even if her ascension to godhood was somehow predicted centuries before it happened?
* Nabu Malitaka and the Lord of the Night - both are formerly angels who, while treated as gods in their respective nations, NEVER referred to themselves as such. And as the LotN explicitly spell it out in Natlan's Archon Quest, angels are a whole different category of beings from gods. This, incidentally, also made it highly unlikely for Option 1 to be true for them, as they were both stripped of their angel statuses by Celestia as punishment and thus would never be granted demon names.
* Venessa - she is canonically the first ever Vision Holder to ascend to full godhood, and this is exactly why Option 2 can't possibly apply to her.
* All Pyro Archons - obviously, Mavuika isn't born with Harborym as her name in both of her lifetimes. This applies to every Pyro Archons as unlike other Archons, they are all humans who won the Pyro Gnosis via fighting prowess. So Option 2 definitely don't apply to them.
* Zhongli - he was an adeptus before he became the Geo Archon. So surely he must've had an adeptus title in the same vein as Moon Carver and Cloud Retainer before ascending to godhood? This makes him a proof for Option 1.
* Venti - the reveal of Zibai being one of Istaroth's "children" and thus Venti's "sibling" made me think that perhaps Venti wasn't born with Barbatos as his name, after all, making him another proof for Option 1.
* The Moon Sisters - all three of them are born long before the First Descender arrived on Teyvat. So both options don't apply to them.
* Columbina - As Nod-Krai's Archon Quest explicitly spells it out, she was literally born without any names to identify herself as, so both options don't apply to her either.
That's all I can think of so far. What do you think?
Commentaires
However, Harborym is the outlier.
As for Venti, I don't think he had a name before he became the Anemo Archon bc he was a part of the thousand winds. Barbatos is a name he got from Celestia like the other archons, while Venti is a name he chose for himself (which he either came up with by himself or took from the nameless bard).
As we know, the Goetic names of the Seven are from the Ars Goetica. Focalor was a Duke of Hell who was known to drown men and sink ships.
Focalors was hand-chosenby Egeria as her successor. I haven't seen evidence of her being part of the prophecy before she was chosen.
It would make sense if Celestia was granting Goetic names since each name ties into their Divine Throne.
Rukkhadevata chose Nahida.
Egeria chose Focalors.
Makoto "chose" Ei.
The Pyro Archon chosen through battle.
The Tsaritsa was chosen to succeed the Belyi Tsar.
So somehow the power gets transferred when the previous Archon dies. We don't know the exact mechanism of power transfer.
Angels wouldn't have goetic names, because (besides presumably never being considered as "gods" in the same sense as Archons are by the Principles) at the time of their creation the Primordial One didn't see the need for that level of control over them, partially because they presumed that Angels weren't capable of causing problems due to their duty as guides to humanity. However, once Koitar and the Voyager incited a rebellion the Heavenly Principles would, rather predictably, freak out and tighten their grip over divine beings so that nothing as destructive to their plans ever arises again; this would also be a nice inversion of a certain piece of Bible lore - namely that Angels were created without a will of their own, and needed God's constant orders to function. If Primordial One did the opposite, well... we know how that went.
The gods as we know them started appearing after the Funerary Year, and I believe that (and this idea is kinda half-baked, so throw Havria's pebbles over everything I'm gonna say here) the goetic names were assigned to each "place" for a god, and not a specific being. Each time someone ascended to divinity, they would be granted a demon name, and be thus bound to the will of the Heavenly Principles whether they like it or not. There is also a distinct possibility of Fate being used by having some entities predestined to achieve godhood, which is what I think is the deal with Visions, and why we don't exactly hear about them ascending to godhood very often (frankly, we aren't even certain if ascending to Celestia automatically equates godhood, and even if it does, some texts use wording that indicates that such ascended beings are still beneath the gods. Vennessa is also our only sample size, because there is enough conflicting information about Guhua's ascension to be discarded).
The fact that Focalors is never addressed with an Oceanid-style name doesn't mean she doesn't have one, as is the case with many deities in Genshin who use only one name, either the demonic or personal. Additionally, both Egeria and Furina are named after Roman spirits (Furina after a goddess of the springs, which is essentially a nymph with extra steps, and Egeria after a literal nymph, though one concocted by the Romans); who is to say that Focalors also isn't named after a Roman entity, especially since they have their own Rome in Remuria.
As a side note, I find it rather peculiar that so many of the gods that we have a Goetia name for use either a less common spelling of the name (Beelzebul instead of Beelzebub), or a completely different name for the same demon (Haborym is a different name for Aim, which honestly might have been done to avoid confusion with aiming as an action, I am getting distracted).
The existence of the Shades kinda throws a wrench into the theory that Heavenly Principles started giving the demonic names to gods after the Angel rebellion, but given how powerful and capable of fucking everything up each of them can be, I'd say that keeping them on a leash like that would be a reasonable decision (and even then we can see that the Shades can go against the Heavenly Principles, as seen with Ronova, Istaroth and most recently Asmoday). I think the tidiest explanation would be that the system either simply doesn't work as intended and Celestia doesn't realize that (by virtue of being asleep for centuries, which is probably also why the Tsaritsa feels bold enough to get her plan rolling), or it works in a completely different way than I envisioned it here.
Also, unrelated crack pot theory from me for the ending. Originally I had short list of reasons why we try to avoid bringing Zhongli up into lore discussions that don't concern him directly, but as I was typing it my brain came up with an idea that Zhongli is something akin to a Prototype of the other post-rebellion gods; created by Celestia, named Morax, sent down to Teyvat, and given the ideal of Contracts because he was literally designed to be incapable of going against the Heavenly Principles directly. I am now going to get some food
Grabbing random famous foreign names is just an easy way to make someone seem cool and important without actually doing that much work to develop them yourself.
It's the same as how the Harbingers borrow names from Italian theatre, but are basically entirely different characters from what they're named after, i.e., Il Capitano is supposed to be a coward that's not actually a decorated military veteran or captain, but just pretends to be for attention.
All hail the great Prinzessin and her servant Night Raven! For there names are Amy and Ose, the most wisest and exalted of the Ars Goetia demons!