AWOIAF: A treatise on adopting SINGERS instead of outdated, inaccurate "Children of the Forest"

[LordOlyver]

I just finished re-reading all of the Bran chapters in Dance, in particular to reanalyze the encounters with the elusive “children of the forest,” whom we quickly learn have a preferred name for themselves (SPOILERS AHEAD, book content from Dance):

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“You will never walk again,” the three-eyed crow had promised, “but you will fly.” Sometimes the sound of song would drift up from someplace far below. The children of the forest, Old Nan would have called the singers, but those who sing the song of earth was their own name for themselves, in the True Tongue that no human man could speak. The ravens could speak it, though. Their small black eyes were full of secrets, and they would caw at him and peck his skin when they heard the songs.

From that point on, Bran refers to his hosts in the cave almost exclusively as “the singers.”

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The last greenseer, the singers called him, but in Bran’s dreams he was still a three-eyed crow.

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”Most of him has gone into the tree,” explained the singer Meera called Leaf.

Further into the same chapter, the Three-Eyed Crow also refers to them as such, telling Bran that the presence he felt while warging into one of the ravens was “a woman, of those who sing the song of earth.”

Later, Bran asks, “Do all the birds have singers in them?”

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“All,” Lord Brynden said. “It was the singers who taught the First Men to send messages by raven…”

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“I thought the greenseers were the wizards of the children,” Bran said. “The singers, I mean.”

All of that brings me to this point: shouldn’t AWOIAF and ASOIAF community at large evolve to adopt the more accurate term ”singers” instead of “children?” There is precedent for this change, namely to call a group of people what they prefer to be called: the wiki entry for the Free Folk acknowledges the term "wildling" (which is FAR more commonly used in the novels, despite its pejorative nature) but opts for the name they call themselves. It seems not only politically correct (if we could call it that in a fictional universe), but far more accurate.

As a starting point, I'd propose the current AWOIAF page on the singers should be edited to reflect the name preferred by them. As of this writing, there are more than 80 usages of the term "children," compared to only two times the term "singers" appears (one of them in a quote by Bran). Some of the edits could be as follows: 

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CURRENT VERSION: Children of the forest
The children of the forest, sometimes referred to simply as the children, are a mysterious non-human race that originally inhabited the continent of Westeros during the Dawn Age long before the arrival of the First Men thousands of years ago. The giants call them woh dak nag gram (little squirrel people). They call themselves those who sing the song of earth in the True Tongue. The children have not been seen by men for hundreds of years.

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PROPOSED REVISION: Singers
The singers, also known as those who sing the song of earth, are a mysterious non-human race that originally inhabited the continent of Westeros during the Dawn Age long before the arrival of the First Men thousands of years ago. The giants call them woh dak nag gram (little squirrel people). They call themselves those who sing the song of earth in the True Tongue. Commonly referred to as "the children of the forest" or simply "the children" throughout Westeros, the singers have not been seen by men for hundreds of years.

Thoughts? Feedback? 

Cheers, my lords and ladies!

[direpupy]

While i understand your reasoning the comparison to the free Folk thing is not entirely correct. Free Folk is used frequently in the books even if wildling is used more, so the fans are acustomed to the term and know it as an alternative. Singers on they other hand is more obscure because it only appears a handfull of times in the Bran chapters. Undoubtetly it will be used  in the coming books and then become similar to Free Folk/wildling in interchangebility, but i do not think its there yet and as such would currently confuse people who may think there on the wrong page when looking for Children of the Forest on the wiki.