They had called her Link almost from the time King Sidon IV had found her. He had named her Linaela, meaning āfound blessingā -- a reference to finding her beside the river, the only survivor of a Moblin attack -- but the children had nicknamed the tiny Hylian baby āLinkā for reasons of their own, and thus the name had stuck.
As she grew, the nickname took on another meaning. Half of the adult Zoras joked that she was some sort of hybrid between Hylian and Zora, the way she swam and sang, and with how slowly she aged, much like their own children. The āmissing linkā between the two races.Ā King Sidon always gently chided those who said as such, as no one knew Linkās heritage, and it could very well be possible, as many of their number as had been lost in Moblin attacks around the time of her finding.Ā
The other half of the adults didnāt make jokes. They wondered, instead, at the nature of Linkās nickname, at the timing of her finding, right when monsters started appearing in much larger numbers all across Hyrule and the surrounding lands. They said nothing, instead watching as the tiny Hylian, adopted second daughter of the Zora Kingās court, grew alongside their own children, growing on par with them instead of much faster, as Hylians were wont to do, and they wondered.
Link herself never thought much of it. She enjoyed the stories of the Hero of Legend, but she had too much to learn and do to think much on her nickname. Learning how to behave in court with her older sister, Mipha, learning the sword and trident from the weapons-master Kayden, in preparation to defend herself from the monsters that kept creeping ever closer, and playing with her friends, in and out of the water, took most of her time.