The Problem of Rog

[Aiwendil]

Man of the Wold wrote:

To be clear my suggestion was to be unclear. I'd use Rôg in passing in someway that is not definitively stated or implied one way or another, whether it is the actual, formal name of that personage or some sort of less formal nom de guerre or legendary apellation.

I can but repeat myself:

I don't see how it makes any difference what sort of a name it is. The trouble, if there is any, is with the word itself. And that means that, if this concern is indeed completely valid, then no solution addresses it save the complete removal of "Rog". The Elves did not use one kind of Sindarin for their true names and a different kind for their epithets.

On the surface your idea seems to have some promise, but when you stop to think about it, it's logic falls apart.

Findegil wrote:

Is not Felagund an example for a nickname adapted from an foring language? Khûzdul when I remeber rightly. So what Lindil suggested, is to provide such a way around the bad-feeling about Rog without stating it explicit.

Interesting. If this is what Lindil and Man of the Wold meant, I apologize for misconstruing them.

Could we re-interpret "Rog" as a name in some non-Elvish language (even implicitly)? The first question is what language it could be. We know little about the Edainic languages; I suppose it could be from one of them. Khuzdul I'm not sure about (being not quite the linguistic expert some seem to think, alas).

But it is a much more difficult matter to come up with reasons for this Elf of Gondolin to have a Beorian, or Halethian, or Marachian, or Khuzdul name. The explanation of Felagund is clear. But Gondolin is the one place you'd expect people not to have such nicknames. No Dwarves ever visited it; nor did any humans save three.

Of course, one could conjure up some fan fiction. Perhaps "Rog" is from one of the Edainic languages known to Hurin, Huor, or Tuor, and was given to the captain of the Folk of the Hammer by one of them.

This is, of course, really stretching things. But even if it were acceptable, it ought to do nothing to the text. Lots of people are known by their epithets; we don't need a footnote telling us that "Felagund" is a nickname to excuse it's appearance in the narrative. In other words, if "Rog" were a proper Marachian name (for instance) it's appearance in the text, without footnote and without comment, would be perfectly justified.

So again: if you can justify such a footnote/comment (which I'm fairly sure you can't), that very justification makes the footnote/comment superfluous.