Subject: Um. Yes, it's 'some kind of flower'.
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Posted on: 2015-02-10 15:33:00 UTC

Specifically, the golden 'Star-Sun', or elanor, bloomed east of the Sea only in the land of Lorien. I believe they also grew in Numenor, back in the day. Sam Gamgee named his daughter after them (hobbits having a thing for flower names).

But... again, I can't come up with a canonical Elda named after... well, I don't even need to say 'a flower'; how about 'a species'? Or even 'a specific object' (as opposed to a general one like 'star').

(This is technically untrue - Finduilas of Nargothrond was nicknamed 'Faelivrin' by her fiance, which means 'sunlight on the pools of Ivrin'. But that's an epesse and Gwindor was an incurable romantic, not a birth-name.

Like I say - there's nothing that says you can't be named after a type of flower. But it's not something I've ever seen. (And leaving aside everything else, readers will assume you named her after Elanor Gamgee... ^_~)

Flower names, flower names... you've said she's a Third Age character, so let's try for local colour.

Rivendell
I'd love a compound based on imloth, 'flowering valley', here. Imlothiel might work well by itself, even, or Imlothwen. You could use the other variant of loth - loss - and pull out Imlossiel. Of the three, I think I like Imlothwen ('maid from the flowering valley') most.

Lorien
I really wanted to go for 'secret blossom' here, but unfortunately the words for 'secret' are things like dolen, hall, thurin, which don't make very female-sounding names. So instead, let's draw on the defining feature of Lorien and go with Malhilith - 'silver gleam from gold'. That encapsulates a mallorn well, I think.

Mirkwood
Obviously we need 'forest' in here, and to avoid ripping off Tauriel, we need it as -daur-. I quite like Tuidaurwen, or Tuidauriel - 'forest bud maid'. It'd be said 'twi-DOW'R-iel'. I'd probably go for the latter, purely because I can't get the w to actually come out in '-daurwen'.

For either of the forest realms, you could also have Calenloth, 'green blossom', giving overtones of 'unripe'. The -th gives it a soft enough feel to work for a woman despite the o.

The Grey Havens
I really like the sound of Sireirin, 'daisies of the river', but unfortunately compounding them makes it look like 'sire' (it's sir-eirin). Lirfalas, 'song of the shoreline', isn't flower-related at all, but I like it anyway. Actually, 'Lireirin', 'song of the daisies', might work - but again, that -re- cluster breaks the reading up too much. I can't pull a decent name out of this combination, I'm afraid.

hS

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