Speaking in Elvish: Whats in a Name?

As you walk into rivendell, you see the elves all around talking to each other in Sindarin. You open your mouth to ask "What is everybody saying?" The other tourists don't hear you, awed by the beauty of Rivendell. The tour guide turns to you and says "I take it you don't know Sindarin." You shake your head. "Not at all," you say. Suddenly, you see Arwen running towards you. Arwen being the current queen of the elves, you all respectfully bow. She walks up to the tour guide and says "Oneru will accompany you on your tour of Middle Earth." An elvin archer steps up. You stand up and say "Oneru? What does that mean?" Arwen smiles. "In the English tongue of Earth," she replies, "it translates to Mattias, which in turn means Son of God."

Now, if you happen to know my name, I know what you are thinking. But the question still remains, how could I do that and turn my name into Sindarin, or Quenya? Well, there are three steps to it. You too can make a name in one of the two Elvish languages. But first, if you don't know what Sindarin or Quenya are, you deserve a refresher course. J.R.R. Tolkien was a big linguist. He created languages since childhood. In fact, the reason he wrote The Lord of the rings was to make a place to create his languages! He created many various languages, but they all slowly evolved or got incorporated into the two Elvish languages of Quenya and Sindarin. Just remember, if you ever encounter an elf, talk to him in sindarin, not Quenya. Quenya is an older language of the higher class, sort of like our Latin. But Sindarin is standard Elvish. All elves speak Sindarin. just remember that if you run up to one speaking Ancient Egyptian or something, you'll hear somebody say "It's Quenya to me." But you can bet that an elf's name will be in Quenya. Now that you know what the two chief languages of Middle Earth are, we can move on to Step 1 of getting an elf name.

Step 1: Find out what your name means.

If your name is James, Harold, Robert or any other name, you might occasionally wonder "What does it mean?" Well, take my sister's name Delaney for example. it comes from Old Celtic, a language which is pretty much Quenya to me. Now, the name derives from delanie, which roughly translates to "child of dark defiance" or "Enemy's child." Yes, that is an exact description of my sister's personality. Now, to turn her name into Quenya, we turn to Step 2.

Step 2: Translate it into Quenya.

The next step of the process is to take the meaning of your name and turn it into Quenya. There are a lot of online sites where you can do this, but not all are trustworthy. I recommend using the Utuvielye Quenya Translator to translate the individual words and putting them together manually. okay, so with Delaney, we translate "Enemy's Child" or "Enemy's Daughter." Enemy is coth and daughter is -iel. So my sister's name is Cothiel.

Step 3: Check your Quenya grammar.

So, you have Cothiel. That is my sister's name. End of story, right? Well, not so fast. We still have to work on grammar. If you make a composite word in Quenya or Sindarin, you take out some syllables to make the word flow easier. So we take Cothiel and remove the i. Therefore, Delaney becomes Cothel.

So thats how I got an Elvish name. I found out my name, Mattias, means Son of God. Cool, huh? So then, I translated Son of God and got Oneru. The name was simple enough that I had nothing to remove, and so it remains Oneru. So if you want an Elvish name, follow those three steps and soon you could be James or Hamish no longer, but Ambaron. helpful sites are:

http://www.squidoo.com/middle-earth-names#module13733649

http://quenya.tripod.com/translator.htm

and

http://www.councilofelrond.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Dictionary&file=index&action=DisplayTermList&pageNumber=1&searchkind=pn_term&get=All&pn_vid=8


Thanks for reading this post. Have fun!

Welcome to the World of Tolkien

Ever wanted to know where the name middle earth came from? How to speak Quenya? Where Gandalf came from? Why Saruman betrayed the White Council? What kind of a name is Frodo Baggins? Well, you've come to the right place. This blog is about everything Tolkien. J.R.R. Tolkien's incredible masterpiece, the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the Hobbit, was one of modern literature's greatest works. However, the extended universe, like the Silmarrion, the History of Middle Earth and the other lesser works of his encompass an unfathomably vast collection of legend and tale that Tolkien spent his whole life working on. It took both J.R.R. Tolkien and considerable work by his son Christopher to create everything that there is to know about Middle Earth. Today, we are only scratching the surface of the great works of J.R.R. Tolkien's mind. Nobody knows how to speak his invented languages of Quenya and Sindarin, no single human being really knows the complete history of Middle Earth, the origins of the many races, the Fourth Age and it's history. We can only begin to fathom this world, so vast it is almost real. The purpose of this blog is an attempt to scratch the surface of the universe created by the Tolkiens and which continues to evolve today.

You will learn about how the languages of Middle Earth drove Tokien's writing. You will hear about how it is impossible to speak Old Entish. You will find out who the Necromancer really was. You will discover what inspired the creation of Saruman. You will find out how to speak some Sindarin. You will even find out how I think The Return of the King should have ended. So hold on tight and watch out for orcs, because we'll be taking the fast lane. Step onto the boat as we speed off into the wild blue yonder, across the ocean mighty and vast and all the way to the edge of the world. Hang on as we break the sound barrier and fly off the end of the world. As you scream, you notice another giant waterfall on the other side of the endless gulf. The boat flies onward and into the waterfall. We chug upstream at our hardest until we crest the ridge and sail onward. We will pass by the Undying Lands, so wave to the immortal elves. We continue over the great sea, past where Numenor once was, onwards forever, until you see land in the distance.

You close in to hear the melody of a Quenya tune, sung by the elves of Rivendell. You see great, beautiful forests, and in the trees you see white shapes moving, a friendly glow to them. We sail towards a little dock. The elves stand there to greet us. As we weigh anchor, Arwen stands there, as beautiful as ever, Aragorn standing by her side holding their six year old son. As you step off the boat, she walks up to you and holds up her hand to say "Welcome to Middle Earth."