347 To Richard Jeffery

[A reply to the following questions: (1) Does 'Speak, friend, and enter' (the inscription over Moria Gate) mean 'Speak as a friend', i.e. in a friendly voice? (2) None of the Kings of Gondor and Amor has a name ending in a vowel, as most Quenya names do. Is this to make them less strange in a Sindarin context, whereas the descendants of Castamir, who presumably regarded the later kings as halfbreeds, asserted their pure blood with 'aggressively Quenya names'? (3) Only men, not Elves, seem to use Quenya at all in Middle-earth for names. Elendil and his sword Narsil are Quenya; Gil-galad and his spear Aiglos are Sindarin, though he was King of the High-elves. Is this related to the absence of artificial pomp among elves? (4) Does tyelpe (the name of the letter ty) correspond to celeb, silver? (5) Could Aragorn mean 'tree-king' (with lenition of *gorn to orn in Celeborn, etc.), and Arathorn possibly 'Two-trees-king', with reference to the Two Trees?]

17 December 1972

Merton College, Oxford

Dear Richard,

Forgive me for not answering your interesting letter (of Aug. 14) much sooner..... As you probably know, I am an old man, and slower at work than I used to be; but I am still burdened with a great many affairs, that constantly interrupt my efforts to publish at least some of my other legends. I have also often been unwell during the last 3 months.

All your questions are interesting, but I am afraid satisfactory answers require in many cases reference to linguistic and legendary matters that would take far too long to deal with in a letter.

1. pedo mellon. I do not know why you are not satisfied with G[andalf]'s own interpretation, I p. 321-2, Say 'friend': i.e. utter the word 'friend'. Because it makes G. seem rather dense? But he admits that he was, and he explains why – adequately for those who realize what a burden of responsibility, haste, and fear he bore.

2. Q[uenya] names of Kings, etc. Q. was known to the learned in Gondor at least as well as Latin still is in W. Europe. Its use was honorific, and there was no reason to accommodate the Q. names to Sindarin. And none of the Q. names in the lists (III 315-8-9) are accommodated: all are in form entirely suitable to Quenya. Q. permitted, indeed favoured, the 'dentals' n, l, r, s, t as final consonants: no other final consonants appear in the Q. lists. Angamaitë 'Iron-handed', and Sangahyando 'Throng¹³³-cleaver', were good Q. but no more so than the other names, and there was no need to assert their royal descent, as that was clear. They were, however, possibly 'aggressive' in being personal warrior names (or nicknames), whereas the other (few) warlike Q. names, like Rómendacil, were 'political': assumed by a king in celebration of victories against a public enemy.

3. High-elvish and Sindarin. The mixture may seem curious to us, but it was entirely in accordance with the history of the First and Second Ages, briefly alluded to in III append. A 313-7. Also III 363. At the time of the L.R. (see III 106) Quenya had been a 'dead' [language] (sc. one not inherited in childhood, but learnt) for many centuries (act. about 6,000 years). The 'High-Elves' or exiled Noldor had, for reasons that the legend of their rebellion and exile from Valinor explains, at once adopted Sindarin, and even translated their Q. names into S. or adapted them. Galadriel though beautiful & noble enough in form is not a Q. name, any more than Gil-galad, which contains the S. word galad; and Celeborn is a transi, of the orig. name Telporno; though said to be a kinsman of King Elu Thingol he was so only afar off, for he too came from Valinor. It may be noted that at the end of the Third Age there were prob. more people (Men) that knew Q., or spoke S., than there were Elves who did either! Though dwindling, the population of Minas Tirith and its fiefs must have been much greater than that of Lindon, Rivendell, and Lórien.¹³⁴ In Gondor the generally used language was 'Westron', a lang. about as mixed as mod. English, but basically derived from the native lang. of the Númenóreans ; but Sindarin was an acquired polite language and used by those of more pure N[úmenórean] descent, esp. in Minas Tirith, if they wished to be polite (as in the cry Ernil i Pheriannath III 41 cf. 231, and Master Perian 160). Narsil is a name composed of 2 basic stems without variation or adjuncts: √NAR 'fire', & √THIL 'white light'. It thus symbolised the chief heavenly lights, as enemies of darkness, Sun (Anar) and Moon (in Q) Isil.¹³⁵ Andúril means Flame of the West (as a region) not of the Sunset.

4. You are of course right in seeing that the words for 'silver' point to an orig.: *kyelepē: Q. tyeipe (with regular syncope of the second e): S. celeb: and Telerin telepi (in T. the syncope of second vowel in a sequence of 2 short vowels of the same quality was not regular, but occurred in words of length such as Telperion). Though tyelpe remained in Q., telpe (with Q. syncope) became the most usual form among the Elves of Valinor, because the Teleri in their lands, to the north of the Noldor, found a great wealth of silver, & became the chief silversmiths among the Eldar.

5. Aragorn etc. This cannot contain a 'tree' word (see note).¹³⁶ 'Tree-King' would have no special fitness for him, and it was already used by an ancestor. The names in the line of Arthedain are peculiar in several ways; and several, though S. in form, are not readily interpretable. But it would need more historical records and linguistic records of S. than exist (sc. than I have found time or need to invent!) to explain them. The system by which all the names from Malvegil onwards are trisyllabic, and have only one 'significant' element¹³⁷(ara being used where the final element was of one syllable; but ar in other cases) is peculiar to this line of names. The ara is prob. derived from cases where aran ' king' lost its n phonetically (as Arathorn), ara- then being used in other cases.

I have not bothered to explain the S. lenitions in the Appendices, already overloaded, because I am afraid they would have been passed over, or have been felt unintelligible and tiresome, by practically all readers, since that is the normal attitude of the English to Welsh. (The lenitions or 'mutations' of S. were deliberately devised to resemble those of W[elsh] in phonetic origin and grammatical use;¹³⁸ but are not the same in either p[honetic] o[rigin] or grammatical] u[se].) Thus ost-giliath 'fortress of the stars' in which the second noun functions as an uninflected genitive shows no mutation. Cf. ennyn Durin. In S. this absence of mutation is maintained (a) in compounds and (b) when a noun is actually virtually an adjective, as in Gil-galad Star (of) brilliance. In S. initial g was retained in composition, where a contact n + g occurred. So born 'hot, red' + gil to borñgil; morn 'black' + dor to morñdor; the triconsonantal group then being reduced to rg, rd. t>þ(th) is the nasal mutation, and so appears after the plural article in: thîw, i Pheriannath. palan-tîriel should phonetically > -thíriel, past participle 'having gazed afar'; but grammatically before actual forms of verbs, the soft mutation only was normally used in later S., to avoid the confusion with other verb stems, and the soft mut. of m>v̄>v was also often used for the same reason. Palantír is Q. < palantīrā̆ with continuative stem of TIR watch, gaze at etc. tíro is S. but a mistake in printing for tĭro imperative (of all persons) in S. (I have appended a good many notes on the Elvish S. verses to Donald Swann's musical settings in The Road Goes Ever On. This includes a note on ath.)

ath: Though it cd. be an S. form of Q. atta '2', it is not in fact related, nor a sign of a dual. It was a collective or group suffix, and the nouns so formed [were] originally singulars. But they were later treated as pl[ural]s, especially when applied to people(s).¹³⁹ The S. duals of nouns or pronouns early became obsolete, except in written works. A case occurs in Orgalaoad 'Day of the Two Trees', but since these S. nouns were all derived from Quenya names of the 6-day week, brought from Valinor, it may be due to an attempt to imitate Q. duals, such as ciriat 2 ships.¹⁴⁰ In any case -d was later lost, and so we have argonath¹⁴¹ 'the group of (two) noble stones instead of *argonad. Orbelain is certainly a case of 'phonological' translation (of which the Noldor were quite capable), since Valanya (adj.) must be from older *Balania which would > S. *Belain, but no such form existed in S.

The intrusion of a suffix ath in Arathorn is not possible. The name contains an abbreviated form of þorono (thorono) 'eagle', seen in Thoron- dor, Thorongil: Q. þorno / sorno. No human or elf could be called Two-tree King, with ref. to the Two Trees of Valinor. They were made & owned by the Valar, but both had perished, in the Darkening of Valinor.

I am afraid it is unfair on linguistically minded readers not to provide them with more material. I should like to. But though I may leave behind me sufficiently ordered matter, at 81 I have no time – not if I am ever to produce any more 'legends'.

Well it is a long while now since Aug. 14! And I have only been able to compose all this at intervals. But I hope it may reach you as a son of Christmas Present – though it may alas! be like some of such, not quite (or at all) what you wanted.

Very best wishes for Yule.
J. R. R. Tolkien

An instance of how difficult it is to keep books correct – mine & the index are full of mistakes – you sign yourself Jeffery, hut Jeffrey is the spelling in the [University] Residents' List. I am nearly always written to as Tolkein (not by you): I do not know why, since it is pronounced by me always -keen.

I am afraid this is largely illegible, and though longwinded and complicated, leaves much to be explained. And not all the words or names can be 'explained': i.e. regularly referred to older forms of known meaning. In living languages (including Elvish langs.!) new words could be invented without any precise origin, or made up of existing elements in compounds that did not follow older phonetic habits. And in such cases 'euphony' (or what seemed 'euphonious' to a language and people at a given time) will then play a part. Also it has to be remembered that the author invented a very great number of names over a long period of time, and though he knew well enough the 'styles' of the supposed languages, at an early period in this labour their phonetic history was not so precise in his mind as it is now!

For instance we have Arnor and Gondor, which he has retained because he desired to avoid Ardor. But it can now only (though reasonably) be explained after invention as due to a blending of Q. arnanóre / arnanor with S. arn(a)dor > ardor. The name was in any case given to mean 'royal land' as being the realm of Elendil and so taking precedence of the southern realm.