Combining words in Elvish
 

Hello dear friends,
First of all, this community is neat and inspiring, thumbs up (-: !!

I need some liguistic help and guidance, hoping to find it here. The issue may sound not serious maybe, but it is very important to me. Recently I've been feeling that I need another name, a new one, and in a different language. So I tried various languages until I realized that Elvish (or Elven?) is the right choice.

The name needs to have the right meaning for me in life now and to "click" in its sound. My thought was to try and assemble/form something like "light lover"/"sun-devotee", "radiant" and more options. Light lover as - I love light. "light devotee" would work too.

That's a start...

I like Galad. Thought of Galadriel, but I am not sure I want to use this one. My tendency is to create a new one.

Any ideas?

Thanks you (((-:

Anat-Galadriela

Hello! Hmm, maybe...

*Narwen 'Sun-maiden, flame-maiden' (primary stress on first syllable). Compare Arwen and Narwain. Or maybe...

*Galadeth could be 'Light-woman, woman of light' (Galadriel 'woman crowned with radiant garland'). Primary stress on first syllable. Or maybe...

*Anóriel 'Sun-daughter' Primary stress on second syllable, anOriel (compare Anórien). Or maybe...

*Caladeth, using a different 'light-word' (primary stress on first syllable) At one point Gil-galad was explained as employing calad.

Compare Adaneth 'mortal woman' (which I think is attested somewhere! or at least theoried by the experts to mean this, if I recall correctly), and other feminine names with -iel (which appears to mean 'daughter' in some cases at least).

Just a few possibilities I hope you like (and are hopefully correct enough!).

I liked some of these names. It gives me a good direction. Is there a way to say that I love light/sunlight/sun? taking Galad (which I prefer over Calad) and combining it with something from "love"-mel?

Galadwen?
Galadinya?

Delimbiyr - as for shining?
ankalima - radiant (v)
kalya - light, illuminate v
melisse - lover,female {mel} (ETYM)
rilma - glittering light {ril} (ETYM)
rilya - glittering, brilliance {ril} (ETYM)

These are some of my findings so far. You are being tremendously helpful. I need to "play" with it a little to know what's right for me. I'd love to get your opinion on this.

I'm no Elvish scholar, but -dil and -dur are the roots that mean lover or devoted, though I only remember them used in male names.

And by te way. welcome to the Downs!

thanks X 2 (-:

Dil and dur you say...Iwonder how should I reframe it - Galadil?

You know, I don't know what to tell you. The only times these suffixes appear are with male names (Earendil, Earendul, Elendil, Mardil, Earnil, Earnur - the last two have nil and nur because of some linguistic modulation - but they all are men). Galadil would sound like a man too.

Maybe there is a variant of -ndil or -ndur somewhere for female names...

The root MEL- means 'love, as a friend'. And we do have Melian 'Dear gift'. Would *Melgalad possibly hold the right sense you're looking for? I'm not sure, but we do have attested Malgalad, so the form itself would seem to be ok.

You mentioned Quenya ancalima as well, and to make it a feminine name you could simply alter the final vowel: Ancalime. Tar-Ancalime already exists however.

Or even Calime itself (final e is not silent of course).

As noted above we have -(n)dil and -(n)dur in Quenya, but galad cannot be Quenya however, due to intial g-. We might be able to Sindarize -(n)dil, although I can't recall at the moment if there is anything regarding this ending and gender (I seem to recall something in PE17 here, but if so I can't remember where). Anyway Tolkien himself gave Sindarin Gaerdil as a seeming equivalent to Quenya Earendil (among other versions).

And I note Roman Rausch on Enerdhil:

From http://www.sindanoorie.net/art/Names.html


Interesting!

Thank you for this interesting input. Could you explain me then, according to your findings, whether anardil is OK?

and if I understand correctly, galad is S and dil is Q? Therefore, it is not OK to mix the two dialects? Assuming it is, does galadil mean "light lover"?

Are there other words for "light" except from "c/galad"? Maybe it would work better with something else.

Anyway Tolkien himself gave Sindarin Gaerdil as a seeming equivalent to Quenya Earendil (among other versions).

What do you mean?

From the Appendix of The Sil:

"brilliance/glory" - aglar (S), alkar (Q)

"sunlight" - árë (Q)

"gleam (of eyes)" - glîn (I think it's S)

"shine" - cal- / gal- (S, I assume)

"radiance" - alata (Q), galad (S)

"fire" - nár (Q), naur (S)

"sun" - anor (S), anar (Q)

"brilliance" - ril (S)

"sparkle" - ita, tinta, tinwe (Q), tin (S)

"shine (with white/silver light)" - sil/thil (I'm not sure how the language division works here)


I hope I got all the "light" words.


About -(n)dil it's said that it is "a frequent ending of personal names [...] it implies 'devotion', 'disnterested love'". -(n)dur is similar in meaning.

I think Anardil is attested by Tolkien, noting that Roman has asterisked the meaning 'Sun-lover' but not the name itself. As for the suggested meaning, I would agree with it as of today (and would be a bit surprised if it turned out to mean something very different, if Tolkien ever specifically explained it somewhere that is).


Yes Quenya words do not begin with the sound g- (S. Galadriel Q. Naltariel or Altariel).

That said, Feanor is a hybrid name, for example; and as we see with the examples Roman notes, there are some 'phonetic adaptations' of already existing names, or accidental forms. So while mixing is possible in a few ways, I think that we fans should rather try to make 'pure' Quenya or Sindarin names, as otherwise we would (arguably) be tinkering with something that the author himself should really establish, within the art of realistic world-building.



That's one of the adaptations I'm speaking of, but this is a very internal sort of detail. In other words, Earendil existed as a name, and so it is 'likely enough' that some Sindarin speaker would render Gaerdil or Gaerennil instead of Quenya Earendil.

However should we really imagine some Quenya name to have existed in Middle-earth, to be possibly 'rendered' into Sindarin, just to allow -ndil or -ndur to be coupled with a Sindarin word? Well we could -- but again I think it's better to keep it simpler if possible, and thus 'tinker less', so to speak, with Tolkien's World here.

Or at least I usually think so!


If that makes sense :) I'm not sure I'm explaining it well.

As far as sound goes anyway, a version of unvoiced th existed in early Quenya but it merged with -s- in that language. Feanor did not agree that this should be allowed and would have called his mother Therinde not Serinde.

Back in Etymologies Tolkien imagined SIL- and THIL- as variant roots, but even if this held true for the later scenario, generally speaking words that include -th- are Sindarin, although since we have silivren in Sindarin too, for example, along with Ithil...

... rather let's say words with -th- are not (later) Quenya ;)

Welcome to the Barrow-downs, galadriela!

This forum is not for linguistic discussion; I'm going to move this thread to the Novices and Newcomers section.

By the way I found this interesting commentary from Patrick Wynne, member of the linguistic editorial team currently publishing 'new' linguistic material from the Tolkien Estate. He noted on the Lambengolmor list (below lifted from two separate posts):


http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/lambengolmor/


So maybe that's what I was remembering; although I still think maybe something newer here appears in PE17. Anyway we might have a feminine form attested in this one case, taking into consideration that Etymologies (in any event) is a somewhat early-ish document.