The Problem of Rog

[Aiwendil]

Unfortunately, I don't think any of these linguistic resources are going to help. The only discovery that could be made that would solve the problem would be the discovery of some later version of the name "Rog" or of precisely the root from which "Rog" was formed.

Mithadan wrote:

This list is said to be in the possession of Carl Hostetter and was copied at the Bodleian Library. I have no personal experience with Mr. Hostetter. The webpage claims that he and his colleagues do not share unpublished materials with others (and is highly critical of these persons). I do not know if this is true.

Alas, it is. The story is that Hostetter showed some unpublished documents to certain fellow Tolkienian linguists and that these latter then published analyses of those texts (which included the unpublished texts themselves). And henceforth the policy has been total secrecy.

Lindil wrote:

After reviewing some of the above posts, I sense that MotW's suggestion is probaly as far as I can lean in the direction of keeping Rôg.

Just to be clear: is the proposal you are talking about just the addition of the circumflex? Or did you mean that we must make "Rog" merely a nickname or epithet?

If it is the latter, as I suspect, then I simply cannot agree.

This is a situation we have run into once or twice before. If there is a problem with the name it must be a contradiction between "Rog" and later Sindarin; in this case changing it to an epithet does nothing to solve the problem. And if there isn't a problem with the name, then there is no reason whatsoever to change it to an epithet.