A PDF version of the article can be found here. It is well-known that in the late 1950s Tolkien made an attempt to revise the cosmology of his imaginary world in order to make it more realistic and scientifically credible than, as he put it, “the Flat Earth and the
I’m not sure if lay-fans have noticed, but something obvious to Tolkien-language scholars is that the Elven languages aren’t being used exactly the same way in the TV show as they were in the Peter Jackson movies, and the languages themselves are slightly different too. There are a few things
Rachel, your name is really cool! It means “ewe” in Hebrew. Sindarin Sindarin doesn’t have a word for “sheep.” We have two options here: Use a less precise word for an animal: Lavan. Coin a new word, based on the Quenya word and the ancient root it was based on,
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
Lynn, your name is really cool! It has a ton of different sources. It could be another version of Linda. It could be derived from surnames that were based in place names, like Lyn (from Llyn – lake), Lynn (from Linn – pool under a waterfall), and Lynn (from Lean
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, 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
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, 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.
Linda, your name is really cool! It’s based on an ancient word meaning “weak, tender, soft.” It wasn’t used on its own until recently, where it was a Germanic nickname for names ending in -linde. But, this isn’t the only source of your name! It’s also a Spanish word meaning