Subject: The Black Speech is tricky.
Author:
Posted on: 2019-11-22 12:05:33 UTC

The reason it's tricky is that it has only a handful of words. This site lists all of them: about 30, with at least three being compounds of the others. So a) every name created from them will be horrible, and b) there's a lot of repetition.

Though really, I ought to be taking into account the handful of Orcish names attested in the Third Age. Grishnákh, Uglúk, Shagrat, Gorbag, Lagduf, Muzgash, Mauhúr, Lugdush, Radbug, Ufthak... if nothing else, they give us a feel for what these names should sound like. (Also, Gorbag appears to contain the element bag, 'cess'; Muzgash may use a debased form of ghâsh, 'fire'; Uglúk could end in -ûk, 'all'; and Lugdush seems to have lug, 'tower'. So they're not entirely untranslatable...!)

hS

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