Legendariumunofficial · Tolkien reference
ENDE
EN
ReferenceCharacters665Places234Peoples & Houses59Languages & Scripts13Artefacts62Works & Letters22Flora10Creatures14Tolkien: Life & Work
ExploreTimelineAges of the WorldFamily treesQuizzesReading pathsWhere Middle-earth comes fromThe shape of the worldNames in GermanEvents in the story35
Current & on the roadNewsDates & eventsTolkien’s EnglandFull biographiesAdaptations8
Tools & houseWrite a nameShire calendarName workshopCoverageAbout & methodAccessibility
Tools

Name workshop

No name in Tolkien is a guess. He assembled them from elements he explained himself — galad- is radiance, -riel a garlanded maiden. Here stands every element this register can cite, and with it every name that carries it.

Everything here Tolkien made. What he did not make is not here: this workshop never joins two elements into a new word, it only shows which attested names share them. Choose a pair that meets in no name, and it says so, rather than invent something that merely looks Elvish. Every element names its source; where there is none, there is no element — neither here nor on a character's page.

Two elements

Pick two and see which names carry both. The answer comes from the register, not from a rule of thumb.

galad--riel

Both elements:Galadriel

Only galad-:no other name

Only -riel:no other name

Tolkien builds a name from two or three meaningful parts and joins them by the sound rules of the language in question: Galadriel is galad- (radiance, radiant light) and -riel (garlanded maiden). Which parts may join is the language's decision, not ours — so not every pair yields a name, and what Tolkien did not build stays empty here.Source: Unfinished Tales, Part Two, ch. IV, The History of Galadriel and Celeborn

The elements

73 elements, attested in 100 entries across 74 names. Sorted by how many names share them.

Where this comes from

The elements live in the register at the names themselves, and they come from the places where Tolkien explains his own naming: the appendix on the elements in Quenya and Sindarin names in The Silmarillion, appendices E and F of The Lord of the Rings, the letters, and the volumes on how the work grew. A part without a source never appears — not here, and not as a chip on a character's page.

Spellings of the same element are folded together: -mîr at Boromir and -mir at Faramir are one building block, not two; the heading shows the more precise spelling, and a name keeps its own where they differ. Where two sources gloss an element differently, both glosses stand — choosing one would quietly discard a source.

All toolsWrite a name in TengwarThe languages