Subject: On the topic of elf names
Author:
Posted on: 2022-02-05 02:42:44 UTC
What's a plausible masculine name that means "ice willow" in any elvish language?
Subject: On the topic of elf names
Author:
Posted on: 2022-02-05 02:42:44 UTC
What's a plausible masculine name that means "ice willow" in any elvish language?
Ignore the quality of this fic; what I'm merely discussing is the OC names. You see, this is a Tolkien fic, and the OCs are elves, but their names seem rather suspicious, and not only because two of them appear to actually have a surname. I don't speak any elvish language, but names like Ailwin Luvrye sound at least a little sus.
So! According to the first paragraph, we have the following family tree:
Halavadar Dorlana, who once lived in Doriath, probably.
Their son, Ailwin Luvyre
His daughter, Y/N Luvyre.
Now, elves can quite happily have as many names as they like - but surnames? The only thing that comes close is House Finwe's use of the name, uh, Finwe. (It goes like this: Finwe had three sons. He called all of them Finwe, then added an extra bit to their names when he figured out their personalities: Curufinwe, Nolofinwe, Arafinwe. Then Curufinwe had seven sons, all of whom he called [something]finwe, including one he just called Curufinwe. At a later date, Nolofinwe and Arafinwe both needed to claim authority, so they augmented their names and became Finwe Nolofinwe and Finwe Arafinwe.) So technically Halavadar could have named their son Luvyre, added the Ailwin later, and Ailwinluvyre's daughter could have had the same treatment. But it's not likely.
As Doriathrin elves, all three should speak Sindarin, or at least Nandorin (closely related). How do the names shape up?
HALAVADAR: actually surprisingly close! Hal+avad+dar is plausibly Sindarin, something like tall+reluctant+stop. It has a few too many As to sound properly Sindarin, though. "Tall and Unstoppable"?
DORLANA: Dor+lann+a is probably the best parsing here: land+wide+from. It's an archaic form, but that's Doriath for you. I think it would actually be Dorlanna, but y'know, isolated people, variant spelling. "From the Wide Land".
AILWIN: Not Sindarin, but I know where it came from. "Ailin" is a Quenya word for a lake, and in Tolkien's very early work, there was a Gnomish (proto-Sindarin) equivalent, "Ail". "Ailwing" is an attested Gnomish word, "Lake Foam", while Ailwin is Ail+win, lake+female, also in Gnomish. "Lady of the Lake". Not valid by the time LotR was written.
LUVYRE: Cripes. Could just about also be Gnomish, Luv+yr+e - hanging+smith+[Sindarin] he, "dangling blacksmith". But even in Gnomish that would more likely be Luvur, and also NO NO NO. No elvish language would ever shove a -vyr- in the middle of a word. It's horrible and I hate it.
So I think they did use a wordlist, but it was one that presented all stages of Sindarin together, and they applied no thought whatsoever to the result. I should point out that there are later versions of most of these words - Luv+yr would be easily transformed into Glinga+tan = Glingadan and be relatively sound. (By what I think is fluke, none of their compounds run into consonant mutations, so they don't have to do what I did to get -dan on the end.)
The amusement value of Y/N having a surname meaning 'male smith', while her dad has a name meaning 'lake woman' is quite high, though.
hS
What's a plausible masculine name that means "ice willow" in any elvish language?
Sindarin, tathar-(?)hel, "willow-ice". It's not clear what -chel actually represents, but it shows up in Forochel, "Northern Ice", so we can safely use it with the ch. A variant would be Tathrechel.
The Quenya version would be Helcatasar (helca-tasar, "ice-willow"), which is just about possible but feels a bit clumsier.
hS
How would you construct a Sindarin version of Victorian flower language?
Eldamo helpfully provides a Semantic Category page, so let's look at the category for flowers. I've looked at the Neo-Sindarin page, because mature Sindarin has like... two real flowers.
The neo-language has lots! Roses, lilies, irises, daisies, poppies, dandelions, daffodils, buttercups. Add in elanor, alfirin (aka simbelmynë) and niphredil, and glance at a few other categories to pull out things like sedge (lisg), hawthorn (tadhos), teazle (tuthlos), cornflower (menelluin), and of course snowthorn (aeglos), and you've got a tolerable set.
Quenya adds a few more - I see hyacinth, pansy, violet, clover, bluebell, and anemone. It might be possible to reconstruct the Sindarin form of these words.
There are also a few flowers that have no analogues in our world; Tolkien Gateway throws up lissuin, mallos, and seregon. You can have athelas, too, though I don't think it's said to have flowers. There might be a few more in Numenor, though as I recall they're all trees.
How you then create a language out of those (other than by directly cribbing a Victorian list)... well, I'm not really sure. ^_^ Out of my wheelhouse, I'm afraid.
hS