Sauron's name

[Alcuin]

Melkor, “he who arises in might” > Morgoth, “black enemy”, was given to the evil Vala by Fëanor in his grief and anguish.

Fëanor was the chief of the Lambengolmor, “Loremasters of Tongues”, a Noldorin school of study he founded. (Rúmil and Pengolod would presumably have been members of this group of scholars.) The shift Melkor > Morgoth, (Q: Morikotto) both consonates and alliterates, particularly in Quenya. It is a not-so-subtle intellectual insult, and with a little effort, we could probably come up with a short list of real-world names similarly and deliberately mangled. In any case, it might be “a low philological jest”, which as David Salo (a better Tolkien scholar than I) has recently suggested “is not at all untypical of Tolkien’s linguistic work.”

Elves were particularly fond of language. If we grant for a moment (even in an imaginative stretch) that Mairon was the Sindarin version of Sauron’s original name in Valarin, and that he used it in dealing with the Elves in Middle-earth, the shift Mairon, “Admirable” > Þauron “Abominable” > Sauron both alliterates and rhymes. “Regular elvish trick,” as Gorbag might have put it. That might also explain why there was an older name for Sauron in Sindarin, Gorthaur, “abominable fear”. Perhaps the gor- was simply dropped, or maybe the Eldar in Middle-earth punned his preferred name.

In both cases we can see alliteration. In Quenya, second similarities can be found at the beginnings of the syllables (consonation), while in Sindarin the second similarities are shifted to the ends of syllables (rhymes). That would fit Tolkien’s style of differentiation between the parent and daughter languages, Quenya and Sindarin: similar forms, but not quite the same. It would at the same time highlight the close relationship between the thought processes of the Calaquendi and the Sindar, the Amanyar and Úmanyar.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Originally Posted by Alcuin

That might also explain why there was an older name for Sauron in Sindarin, Gorthaur, “abominable fear”. Perhaps the gor- was simply dropped, or maybe the Eldar in Middle-earth punned his preferred name.

Was Gorthaur in fact older? It may be the case; I don't know. It is possible that the Sindar had grim experience of Mairon/Gorthaur during the Chaining of Melkor, long before the Noldorin exiles appeared on the scene. But then again, there is no reason to think that the Eldar of Valinor had ever encountered Sauron, since he explicitly was Melkor's deputy and the Lieutenant of Angband before the Chaining and thus was gone from Valinor long before the Great Journey. (So how would they know his 'true' name?)

It would appear that Q. Sauron would have to be an Exilic name adapted from Sindarin (with no intermediate theta-form, Feanor's revanchism no longer being an issue). The Gor- element might just have been an 'optional' intensifier,* used commonly in the Sindarin version to distinguish the name from the common noun. The question arises, though, why the Quenya form became (apparently) dominant despite the adoption of Sindarin by the Exiles**; it perhaps might reflect the fact that Sauron was not a matter of general concern for the Elves until ca 1000 SA or later, and it took a long time to identify 'Annatar' with Morgoth's XO; by the time Dark Lord Jr. became a matter for discussion it was an issue for the Wise (+/- Celebrimbor), whom we might suppose to have spoken Quenya among themselves.

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*As was, I think, certainly the case back in the days of Thu/Gorthu

**In external reality, of course Gorthaur had been his his 'Noldorin' name

[tom the eldest]

His name is mairon the admirable,but after he join morgoth he became sauron/gorthaur the cruel.