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!
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