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

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.

Dennis, your name is really cool! It’s an ancient Greek name that means “the Zeus of Nysa.” Nysa was a forested land of nymphs where Dionysios was raised. Zeus was his father, which is why he was named after him, much the way that Finwë’s descendants include “Fin” in their

Emily, your name is really cool! It’s an old Latin family name meaning “rival.” Quenya There’s no direct translation for “rival.” The closest that we have is “enemy,” but that has very dark undertones, not what we want. Instead, let’s use a fan-made word, *Anahta, which means “to oppose.” I

Julia, your name is really cool! It’s an ancient Roman family name meaning “Descended from Jupiter.” Because it was a family name, Julia and Julius were considered to be the same name, and I’ve included masculine versions. This is a name within a name, so we’ll take three approaches to

Charles, your name is really cool! It’s an old Germanic name meaning “Free Person.” It’s been a popular name for men and women for over a thousand years, basically ever since the Frankish king Charlemagne reigned. I included feminine versions of the name because they’ve developed in fascinating ways right

Sarah, your name is really cool! It’s an ancient Hebrew name meaning “lady, princess.” Quenya The Quenya word for “lady” is Heri, and the word for “Princess (daughter of the king)” is Aranel. Now, we can leave these as they are, but for an Elven name, they are more like

Erin, your name is really cool! It’s an Irish name meaning “to/for Ireland.” As a personal name it pops up in the 20th century, thus I’ve charted its development as the name of Ireland. “Dative Case” is a fancy linguistic term for nouns being used in a sentence, where the

Christopher, your name is really cool! It’s an ancient Greek name, describing and therefore naming a Saint, one who carried baby Christ across water. It literally means “Christ-bearing.” Tolkien liked this name, and gave the name to his son who went on to make sure the world knew the true