[Yeade]

Originally Posted by Maédhros

You might want to check this thread out, especially since it has a very complete although not perfect tree of the Eldar and Edain genealogy.

Thanks for the link! I'll be sure to comb carefully through the thread when I have a free night. (Though I do wish I had this resource before I started as it's much, much easier to build on the work of others when doing these family trees. Ah, well.) It's very helpful.

I think I'm going to have to do some major revamping to account for your corrections and the information in the thread. Both halves are close to the 5 MB upload limit, so I'll be forced to split the chart into thirds. I want the cuts to be natural or at least logical. The most obvious cut, I think, is at Elros and Elrond; that's where the first version was split. I had trouble placing the Númenórean royals, but settled for tacking it to the first half. After adding in dates, expanding the three Houses of Men and the Númenórean line, I couldn't get all the Kings of Númenor into one half. Thus the, IMHO, rather awkward cut in the current version. If I'm going to further detail the Eldar lines, I think I'll cut at Elros and Elrond, then move all the Númenórean royals into the next third. The question, then, is how to make the second cut. I feel a bit uneasy about chopping apart the lines of Elendil--I think because I take the whole fuss over unbroken succession to heart--but I must balance the material in the last two thirds. Any ideas?

Originally Posted by Formendacil

In general, unless mentioned as women, wives, or daughters, it's generally a safe assumption to assume that a name belongs to a man. This doesn't mean that Arda was overbalanced by one gender, just that the names and lineage of most women were never recorded or remembered in the records in the same way as those of men.

Yes, that certainly seems to be the case. It's the daughters aspect of it that gives me a loophole I can use to satisfy both the feminist (equality of the sexes) and artist (balance and variation in color) in me. So, I suppose I'll just keep those arbitrary women unless canon explicitly or implicitly says otherwise.

Not that the process of marking out women is totally arbitrary. Just subjective, based on naming patterns or me deciding such-and-such sounds a bit feminine. I mean, I thought Tolkien was quite particular in naming his characters, so perhaps there are etymological clues as to gender. Sounds a bit far-fetched, but it's the only idea I can think of that's worth pursuing. It's just beyond what I can do. Opinions on this would be welcome.

Maédhros, Formendacil, thank you both for your comments.