Swords

amysrevenge said:
I wonder how "Never Look Back" or "No Regrets" would sound in proper Elvish languages. lol
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:cool: Probably lovely.

So Feanor's quote while his sword is against Fingolfin's breast is:
"This is sharper than thy tongue. Try but once more to usurp my place and the love of my father, and maybe it will rid the Noldor of one who seeks to be the master of thralls."

Ideas?

Alternatively, we could have the name be a prophecy/hint of his bad decisions, but his positive role after the Dagor Dagorath, when he breaks the Silmarils and allows the Trees to be reborn. If we combine the two... maybe "Breaker of Chains" or "Giver of Freedom", in that it stands against "one who seeks to be the master of thralls" and its maker will "free" the light of the Trees from the Silmarils in the end?
 
I like something that sounded good when he named it, but then later comes to mean something else (been trying for a while now to come up with something that would have had a positive connotation upon naming but would then have a tragic second new meaning post-Kinslaying).
 
Looking up some of the famous swords of legend and pseudo-history, we have:

Gram: Sigurd's sword, used to kill Fafnir the dragon. Means "Wrath"

Tizona: one of the two swords of El Cid. Means something like "firebrand"

Durendal: Roland's sword. From durer, "to endure"?

Joyeuse: Charlemagne's sword. Means "Joyous"


So we have a lot of leeway not to give proper-noun-type names ("Bringer of" "Destroyer of", etc.) to the blades. "Firebrand" could actually work for Feanor, given he's the "Spirit of Fire" and the Burning of the Ships... Or we could give it a highly ironic name like "Kin's Friend."


EDITED TO ADD: I had forgotten that, in The Song of Roland, the rather foolish king Baligant names his sword "precious", and this is clearly meant to be funny. So we can give silly people (perhaps Orodreth?) silly names for their swords, in Sindarin or Quenya, as a type of Easter Egg for the more learned members of the audience
 
Ancaruin - well that#s the name of Feanors sword in MERP. Pitiless would be
olerdh in Noldorin... not a very beautiful name in my ears. What would be Oathkeeper? Gwestgarth? Gift of the Noldor, Ngolodoant? light of pride, Glorblaud? No Remorse Mûtiglath? Don't look back Anantir or Anattire? Doombringer Tulumanar or Togamarth?
 
What does Ancaruin mean?

I kinda like how "Anantir or Anattire" could pun on Annatar, lord of gifts, but that's a *deep* cut reference.
 
Another Idea... some Names we have in Tolkien:

Malvegil - sword of Gold
Calmacil - Sword of Light
Elemmacil- Sword of Stars
Sangahyando - throng-cleaver

those are personal names, but what if they actually were named after famous weapons that had existed at one time? I guess they could be used for Swords if we needed names...
 
Ancaruin, fireblaze row of teeth or maybe red flame row of teeth, but it should be
Ancaruinë or Ancarunya in proper quenya.

Anyway I#m not an expert in elvish... somebody should check these names if they are correct.
 
"dh" is pronounced like the "th" in "the", right?

So how about Olerdhegil, "pitiless sword"? It's not pretty, but also not unlovely to my ear...

I do like Ancarunya... but could we singularize it? "Flaming tooth" makes more sense for a single blade than "flaming teeth"
 
that would be a mixed Noldorin-Sindarin Form. Not that such a thing would be unheard of, i mean the Name feanor is a sindarized spelling of Quenya Feanáro...

but I'm not sure. Maybe Olerdheleg?

by the way, I use https://www.elfdict.com and http://eldamo.org when working with Tolkiens languages... so i guess everybody could look through those wordlists themselves and try out.
 
Haerangil said:
that would be a mixed Noldorin-Sindarin Form. Not that such a thing would be unheard of, i mean the Name feanor is a sindarized spelling of Quenya Feanáro...

but I'm not sure. Maybe Olerdheleg?
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Yeah. Ouch. Yeah... I'm not so good on the languages. Obviously.

I like the sound of "Olerdhegil" better than "Olerdheleg", but Tolkien would probably rise from his grave to kill me if I said we should ignore the Noldo-Sindar language differences...

looking at the Ambar-Eladaron dictionary (so don't yell at me if this is incorrect) "ma" means "hand". So could we say Olerdhima? Pitiless hand?


Or Carcarunya for "flaming tooth"?
 
Haerangil said:
I like carcarúnya. don't know if Olerdhima works this way with -i- as a connecting vowel...
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No idea! It just didn't look/sound right without a connecting vowel, so I added one...

I like Carcarunya, with an accent either on the first or penultimate syllable.
 
I should add, on a note on the languages thing... I will totally be everyone's John Rhys-Davies to y'all's David Salo: I know very little about the languages, and will mash them together in horrible ways that look/sound good to me.
 
i'm far from d.salo...

that's why i said if we make up new names somebody who knows tolkienlang should doublecheck it
 
I don't know about the naming of swords, to be honest. To me, it doesn't feel right giving a sword a name it doesn't have in the source material. How well do we know Quenya or Sindarian?
 
Ange1e4e5 said:
I don't know about the naming of swords, to be honest. To me, it doesn't feel right giving a sword a name it doesn't have in the source material. How well do we know Quenya or Sindarian?
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There is certainly enough available to be naming swords, just like we would any characters we need to flesh locations out.
 
True. You know, I remember back to reading the Inheritance Cycle, which has a chapter where a blacksmith talks about what happens when a man names the sword he uses, with the sword becoming part of his identity. Swords can have their own legends, like Narsil. Where was it from before Elendil?

My other concern was if we could create a name from Sindarian or Quenya.
 
Ange1e4e5 said:
True. You know, I remember back to reading the Inheritance Cycle, which has a chapter where a blacksmith talks about what happens when a man names the sword he uses, with the sword becoming part of his identity. Swords can have their own legends, like Narsil. Where was it from before Elendil?

My other concern was if we could create a name from Sindarian or Quenya.
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Filling in the history of Narsil is actually something I'm quite looking forward to!

And I think we do have enough Sindarin/Quenya to create names: not for every sword we'll ever see, obviously, but for the really important ones. Traditionally names have swords that are simple or compound nouns, such as "Wrath" (Gram) or "Joyeuse"; even Tolkien's swords have names like "Orc-cleaver" and "foe-hammer", so I think that, if we're willing to be creative and thorough with the vocab we have, we can come up with some appropriate, interesting, and memorable names.
 
Kennings, compound nouns, same diff ;)

But that makes me think: we should certainly try to make as many allusions to Tolkien's beloved Northern Literature as possible, including using Norse kennings for names (translated into the appropriate language, of course).
 
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