Tolkien Elvish and spider naming

[goatpiper]

Hey all you JRRT- heads out there...

I just got my first sling (a chaco golden knee), and named it Glorwath - Gold Shadow. I was tempted to use Ungoliant or Shelob, but I have this awesome book called 'The Languages of Tolkien's Middle-Earth', which is a guide to the usage and grammar of his invented languages. It has an Elvish-English and English-Elvish glossary, and is extremely cool. Ungol means spider, and ungwe is spider's web. I plan on naming all my spiders by creating them from the Elvish. Yeah, so I'm a supergeek, but aren't we all, really?

gp

 

[Mendi]

Hi and welcome to the boards! Nice name as well!

 

[phoenixxavierre]

cool!

Hi gp,

Great names! I've loved J.R.R.'s writings for a very long time!

Tolkien was an incredible man, what an imagination! Not geeky at all in my opinion!

paul

 

[Shox]

his writtings were heavily based in ancient germanic/norse myth...names come from there.

...and i'm not a geek/nerd/ what not...

 

[goatpiper]

Well, he based his Elvish on Finnish, so that's the major relationship to real-world languages, but if you've seen the movies or attempted to learn a bit of his languages yourself, you can see how beautiful and 'real' they are. There are plenty of people in the world who can speak Elvish fluently, both Quenya (Elvish Latin) and Sindarin (Colloquial Elvish).
Here's cool stuff, looking in the book. 'Cave' has three words, but they're Orcish, I think, not Elvish...grod, groth and rod. So cave spider (being terrestrial, in my opinion) could be ungolgroth, ungolgroth and ungolrod. I think you could even drop the 'L' and have something like Ungorod. Galadhaglar is in the running for my next T...an A.Metallica Sling, if all goes well. It's pronounced Gal-ath-ag-lar, and means 'Tree Glory'.

gp

 

[caligulathegod]

Grod, groth are both Elvish rather than Orc.

Tolkien based the phonetics on Finnish, not really the etymology. Also, the Dwarvish names were taken from Norse because they are just translations from Khuzdul.

Anyway, pretty cool. That book,though, is full of inaccuracies and is pretty much dismissed by the hardcore Tolkienites. It was written before Christopher Tolkien posthumously published his father's writings, so it's pretty dated.

I did a bit of looking and found some info.

Glor/glaur is derived from laurëa (pl. laurië, noun laurë meaning "gold color of light". Valley of Gold > Lórien (name of a region in Valinor)

Wath/gwath is shadow like in dim light. Shadow meaning that which is cast by things in the light is morchaint. Other roots are lum/lumbe or dae.

There's lots of online dictionaries for your other Elvish names. Just google Sindarin or Quenya. Have fun. I have considered doing the same for some of my T's.

 

[goatpiper]

It can be debated that grod and groth are Elvish...there are plenty of words that Tolkien invented and used that he didn't assign or imply a derivation. Shelob is actually one of these, interestingly enough. Depending on the authority you refer to, you'll get different answers. The corpus of work Tolkien left behind was largely unorganized when he passed, leaving people to interpret the vast majority of it (90 % of it unpublished when he died) the best they could. All understanding of his languages has been drawn from context and his notes on usage and grammar. At times, I understand, there were plenty of corrections and contradictions he himself made throughout his mountain of notes, since he had not prepared for publication. Thanks to a number of linguists and Christopher Tolkien, we have what we have, and now I can name my spiders in my own way. Pretty groovy for a dude that worked full time as a professor...hard to believe he created the Mt. Everest of work that he did. Definitely one of my heros. Think he'd be into T's?
Other name idea...Felagund, meaning 'cave-hewer', a name given to Finrod, one of the Noldor and founder of the realm of Nargothrond, a vast underground fortress...Felagund was Dwarvish in origin - from 'felek-gundu'. Cool name for a burrower.

gp

 

[caligulathegod]

Shelob just means She-female Lob-old english for spider (like Lobster). Tolkien specifically says it is English representing the Common Speech (Westron) in his letters.

Menegroth comes from Groth. Elu Thingol would not use Orcish to name his home. I'm pretty sure it's Sindarin.

Welcome, to a fellow Tolkienite

 

[goatpiper]

Cool...haven't read the letters. I'll get to it someday, I figure.
Hey...cheesy and alliterative, but howzabout Tolkien the T?

har har,
gp