Articles by: Fiona J.

Fiona J.

Hello! I'm your friendly neighborhood linguist! I grew up on a small sheep and horse ranch in Montana, but now I'm a city-slicker and a college grad, with a degree in English-Linguistics from the University of Montana. I am the owner and head translator of this website.

Timothy in Elvish

Timothy, your name is really cool! It’s an Ancient Greek name that means “Honour God.” The “Honour” part is a verb, so we’ll make that into an agental noun (honourer/one who honours) to make it fit with Elven name-structures. The Theos part here is referring to the Christian god, so

Joshua In Elvish

Joshua, your name is really cool! It means “YHWH will save.” It has a fascinating history because it entered into the European languages twice: once through Ancient Greek, and again when translators of the Bible started looking at older, closer to the original sources and retranslating everything. Basically, Joshua and

Madeline in Elvish

Madeline, your name is really cool! It’s from the Ancient Greek word meaning “of/from Magdala.” It was used as an epithet for one of the many Biblical characters named Mary, and started to become used as a name on its own after the translation into Latin. Magdala itself is the

Andrew in Elvish

Andrew, your name is really cool! It’s an Ancient Greek name meaning “man (as in the gendered term).” This name has been imported to many languages, and become a name for women as well, which makes the translation a little difficult. For those, I’ll shift the translation to “manly” instead.

Dorothy in Elvish

Dorothy, your name is really cool! It’s an Ancient Greek name meaning “gift of a god.” The word “theós” is a generic word for “a god,” not a name for a specific god. Therefore, translating this will be much easier than other deity-themed names. Quenya The word for “gift” is

Roman in Elvish

Roman, your name is really cool! It’s a name based on the Roman ethnicity, and those are really, really difficult to translate. Well, you know me, I love it when it gets interesting! Sometimes when translating an ethnicity, you can go back to what the name of the ethnicity means.