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Old 01-07-2007, 05:52 AM   #67
Findegil
King's Writer
 
Join Date: Jul 2002
Posts: 1,694
Findegil is a guest of Tom Bombadil.
Welcome to this slow part of the Downs mhagain!
It is really nice to see someone interested in our project. I would have given you an warm welcome early, but I found it more important to make an elaborate answere to your post, which took some time.

On topic: The problem we have with Rog is exactly that we all feel that Rog might be out of place in the later languages but that we have no hard statement of JRR Tolkien to that fact.
The statements in the "Maeglin" chapter are telling of course, but they do not address Rog. And still it is matter of personal taste if Rog is fitting in later elvish or not. And as long as we have no quote from JRR Tolkien to go with, we can not be sure about Rog.

And even if we had such a statement, as long as we would not have the name actually planed for that character it would be possible within our system of rules that we would consider the change of the name Rog a plan of JRR Tolkien that is not feasible for use due to the lack of information about it (a agree that this would be unlikely in this case).

The idea to chose a replacement name for Rog from the line of the stewards of Gondor is a good one. And I personally would also go in that direction instate of searching a linguistically invention to fit the meaning of Rog in the later language. But here again we get a problem: There are a lot of names of the stewards of Gondor that are not (jet) used in the earlier legends:

Pelendur
Vorondil
Mardil
Eradan
Herion
Belegorn
Cirion
Hallas
Belecthor
Beregond
Thorondir

How do we chose the right one, and isn't any choice we make a kind of fan-fiction?
A first reduction could be argued by the linguistical evidence:
The Gnomish lexicon gives 'rog' as 'doughty, strong'.
In the "Etymologies" we find:
"BEL- strong. Cf. BAL(?). Stem not found in Q. T belle (physical) strength; belda strong. Ilk. bel (*belē) strength; Beleg the Strong, name of Ilkorin bowman of Doriath. *bélek, *béleka, ON beleka mighty, huge, great; EN beleg great (n.b. this word is distinct in form from though related to Ilk. name Beleg); cf. EN Beleg-ol [GAWA] = Q Aule; Belegoer Great Sea [AY], name of sea between Middle-earth and the West; Belegost Great City [os], name of one of the chief places of the Dwarves. T belka 'excessive' is possibly from ON; ON belda strong, belle strength (EN belt strong in body, bellas bodily strength) are possibly from T. Cf. name Belthronding of Beleg's yew-bow: see STAR, DING."

Thus a name with the first element of Beleg[c]- is near to the earlier Rog in meaning. But this leaves us still with:
Belegorn and Belecthor

I agree that Belecthor is the more likely since -orn means 'tree' and I can't see any good connection between the character of Rog and a tree (beside his wooden club maybe ). In the "Etymologies" we find for -thor:
"THOR-, THORON- Q soron (and sorne), pl. sorni eagle; N thor and thoron, pl. therein - thoron is properly old gen. sg. = ON thoronen, Q sernen, appearing in names as Cil-thoron, or Cil-thorondor [KIL]. Ilk. thorn, pl. thurin. Q Sorontar (name of) King of Eagles, N Thorondor, Ilk. Thorntor = Torthurnion. [Added:] Cf. name Elthor(o)n = eagle of sky.
[The following was added in hastily above the entry THOR, THORON:
'THOR- = come swooping down; cf. Brilthor. Adj. thôr swooping, leaping down; thórod torrent.' I take this to be an indication of the root-sense of THOR eagle.]“

Thus the second element „-thor“ could be connected to the action Rog did in the battle – swooping down on the Balrogs.

All this is very nice, but does it convince us that we have found the replacement for Rog that JRR Tolkien had in mind? I hesitate to answer this questions with „yes“. At least I would like to hear other minds comment on this.

Aiwendil, you had been most adamant on not changing Rog with an invented name. Does Belecthor suit you more?

Respectfully
Findegil
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