Oh god, this is a bugbear for anybody I think. I made up some naming conventions for Dwarves, which I have linked here.
Tolkien mined the Völuspá saga for his Dwarf names… and there are actually a whole bunch of names he DIDN’T USE, so go to town!
For the race of Men, I have used names similar in rhythm and vowel quality to the ones Tolkien already made up. It’s worth remembering that every name has a culture attached to it! A Rohirric name is different to a Gondorian one! (e.g. Folcwine, Gamling vs Faramir, Beregond etc).
There’s plenty of Elven Name generators, if you wanted to cheat a bit! Here’s one!
I also made up a WHOLE LIST OF SINDARIN NAMES for possible Mirkwood Elves, using the Sindarin-English dictionary project Hisweloke. Here they are reproduced for you, to get some sort of idea of how I did it!
Laerophen – Tree Song Laindawar – Free Forest Taembeng – Long Bow Ecthelben – spear point Magol – Sword Haedirn – Remote watcher Hathol – Blade Lagorind – swift thought Merilin – nightingale Mithrad – wandering path Talathar – flat land of grass Cúdan – Bow-wright Meneglas – thousand leaves Síriel – daughter of the river
When it comes to the Dwarven dark-names, I spent ages and AGES AND AAAGES wrestling with Neo-Khuzdul to find something that works (and that I can somewhat pronounce!!!)
They’d have to pass through not one, but TWO metaphysical barriers. There’s the wall between the living and the dead, of course. But there’s also the mists between Aman and Middle-Earth that separate the Blessed Realm from the ‘real world’ and keep it apart and inaccessible.
Hell, it’s hard enough for the spirits of the dead dwarves to make it there!
This is just an silly/odd idea, but I like to think that if a dwarf deliberately dropped something into Gimlin-zaram (say, a hammer, or a pen?), it would immediately sink without trace beneath the glowing water. No other change or sign to show its passing.
The next time that dwarf saw Mahal, that hammer or pen would be in His great hand, and he would give off a slight air of mild annoyance. He would give it back with pointedly deliberate movements.
“Please refrain from littering, my child. Please use the bins provided.”
The idea of Mahal somehow gathering litter is hilarious, but this is now making me question far too many things. Like what happens if you tie a string to the pen and lower it into the waters? Does the string snap when the pen disappears from sight or would it just keep feeding into the waters until you have no string left? Is there a bottom to the pool?
Could one pull the pen back up from the pool by the string if it did stay intact?
Could one theoretically swim in the pool? Like if instead of sitting on a bench and staring into the pool, you just jumped into it? Has anyone done that? Would your clothes get wet if you did somehow manage? What would happen if you dropped the pen while you were someplace on Middle Earth? Could someone else from the Hall find the pen later if they went to the exact same spot or does the pen disappear once it’s no longer touching a dead dwarf and Mahal has a dead dwarf litter radar and is going to have to go find this pen because you can’t just leave afterlife pens lying around on Middle Earth. That’s how you break the barrier between the living and dead, children. Could Gandalf pick up the pen and use it or can he only look but not touch? Does he send Mahal a message via god wifi to pick up this pen that Thorin dropped in Bilbo’s room because someone’s going to trip over it and cause a zombie uprising?
I’m going to go to the store before I start wondering about cross dimensional travel and death in the Tolkien universe and whether there’s like invisible litter all over Middle Earth from a bunch of dead dwarves.
They’d have to pass through not one, but TWO metaphysical barriers. There’s the wall between the living and the dead, of course. But there’s also the mists between Aman and Middle-Earth that separate the Blessed Realm from the ‘real world’ and keep it apart and inaccessible.
Hell, it’s hard enough for the spirits of the dead dwarves to make it there!
This is just an silly/odd idea, but I like to think that if a dwarf deliberately dropped something into Gimlin-zaram (say, a hammer, or a pen?), it would immediately sink without trace beneath the glowing water. No other change or sign to show its passing.
The next time that dwarf saw Mahal, that hammer or pen would be in His great hand, and he would give off a slight air of mild annoyance. He would give it back with pointedly deliberate movements.
“Please refrain from littering, my child. Please use the bins provided.”
Okay, so if you’re only familiar with the movies, then you don’t know this, but in the Lord of the Rings books when Boromir dies, Legolas and Aragorn sing a song at his funeral (no Gimli doesn’t sing). Now when I read the books, I fell in love with this song, because it’s a beautiful poem, and you should go read it.
Well I was thinking about it again today, and one thing that still impresses me, is that canonically, Aragorn and Legolas come up with this on the spot. There doesn’t appear to be any moment in which they sit down and write this, they just sing. And it can’t be a standard funeral song because it specifically references Boromir and their journey
Now the real reason the poem is so nice is because Tolkien was a poet and loved to fit as much poetry as he logically and illogically could into his works, and naturally he had plenty of time to revise this death-song and made it beautiful, but I came up with an in-text explanation as well.
So I’ve decided that clearly this is a well practiced skill for elves and people raised by elves. They obviously spend evenings sitting in halls coming up with spontaneous poetry which they then recite to the crowds. I am adamantly convinced this happens. Seriously, read up on Tolkien’s elves and tell me I’m being unrealistic.
But to the point, thinking about this, I decided that naturally most of the poetry we see from the elves is beautiful and flowing and elegant because that’s the style they’re familiar with. But if introduced to other styles of poetry, they likely could do quite well
So what I’m saying is, elves would be really good at freestyle rapping
damn, I was yelling Elvish rap battles! before I got halfway through the post
YES. ALL OF THIS.
I only have two tiny things to contribute to this post:
If you are like me and love the Lament for Boromir, you absolutely need to go listen to this version by @everywindintheriver. She does a lot of setting Tolkien poetry to music, but this remains one of my absolute favorites; it’s quite beautiful and haunting.
Elvish rap battles are 100% canon. In Silmarillion version of “The Tale of Beren and Luthien,” there’s a bit where Sauron captures Beren and Finrod Felagund while they’re on a quest, and “Felagund strove with Sauron in songs of power” or, in other words, they literally had a contest where they sang poetry at each other and tried to destroy each other with their words, so. Elvish rap battles definitely definitely happened.
HEY THIS IS AWESOME… and i also have a thing to add!
The reason Gimli doesn’t sing? Is because they left him the East wind. So, Aragorn first sings of the West wind, then Legolas sings of the South wind, and then Aragorn sings of the North wind, all asking of news of Boromir.
But to the East is Mordor, and you can imagine that Mordor is pretty damned pleased about the recent adjustment in Boromir’s breathing conditions.
So Gimli, tactfully, doesn’t sing.
‘You left the East Wind to me,’ said Gimli, ‘but I will say
naught of it.’
‘That is as it should be,’ said Aragorn. ‘In Minas Tirith
they endure the East Wind, but they do not ask it for tidings.’
– The Departure of Boromir, The Two Towers.
From this, I personally surmise two things.
a. Book-Aragorn is a tremendous attention-hog. WHAT A SHOWPONY.
b. it’s not uncommon or unusual for Dwarves to be warrior-bards, no less than Elves.
For @determamfidd‘s amazing and massive fanfic Sansûkh, which is a blessing to this fandom and everyone should read it. It’s written mostly from Thorin’s POV, the character development is amazingly done and not just focused on one character and I love them all.
I’M GIBBERING HERE, THIS IS SO SO ADORABLE AHHH
look at his wee dubious face, he is so not convinced about this new weird elf lmaaaao I LOVE HIS LIL CLOTHES, the neckerchief and the shoulder-seams and the front-detail and the high-waisted soft belt AHHH he looks so like a wee Dwarf should! His lovely big Dwarfy nose, his hair and the little fuzz on his jawline and oh my good god he’s precious I want to give him the biggest hug, I bet he is the huggiest lil boy ever, you’ve drawn him so cozy and cuddly OH HELP ME MAHAL
lskdghflajhs HE’S ADORABLE AND GORGEOUS AND I LOVE HIM SO SO VERY MUCH. thank you, thank you SO much, you incredible artist you!
Aw Yiss 