Just stumbled upon this thread, and am fascinated by the various Elvish names created
What has me wondering: what is the meaning of the name Gilgodhrian? I figured out how to pronounce it, but am lost as to what it means.
Thank you for any assistance!
Well, it's a bit of a mish-mash, but you could have:
Gil = Star
Godh = Machine is your best bet, (Gaud, the 'au' does become an 'o' after all)
Rian = Well, there's a First Age woman, Rían. rî = crown/garland and an = to/for, but that doesn't make a whole lot of sense either!
So it doesn't really mean an awful lot I'm afraid
Xandarien Elanessa, Híril of Pupils of the Istari on Evernight
I tried and failed at this one too :-\ One bit might help though: the godhrian part may have consisted of gon(d) + rian. The dh resulting from n+r is a common mutation, supposing the d would drop.
Is there a way to make sense of Taelanor? The name was made up through a combination of the random generator at character creation and one of my favorite actresses (Lee Tae Ran), so I've always figured it was meaningless. Would be lovely if I turned out to be wrong though.
If we dissect the 'anor' element meaning "sun" we have a 'tael' to deal with. I haven't found it in attested Sindarin word lists or dictionaries (unless it's an inflected form). However, web search brought up this quasi-Neo-Sindarin site: Grey-elven Linguistics Mishmashwhereat an adverb 'othail' is constrcuted (scroll down to "Coinages") meaning "still, ever, even now". By reverse-engineering that we may think that Taelanor might be meaning "the ever present flame of the Sun"
Yeah, quasi as in 'it bears no resemblance to Sindarin at all' it's Sindarin mashed with Quenya mashed with some good ol' made-up-ness. Seriously though, don't use that as a Sindarin reference site! (Given that 'othail' in Sindarin would be some bizarre compound meaning 'about feet'). Ever in Sindarin is ui-.
Tael doesn't exist I'm afraid, and there's no word it could have conceivably come from that it's been changed to in a compound either unless we start going down the roots (TAH- height, loftiness, or TAJ- extend, lengthen) but then we're making up words without knowing a meaning to start with!
Xandarien Elanessa, Híril of Pupils of the Istari on Evernight
Yep. You're 100% right and I should have made that quasi bit quasier Even if we decide to construct stuff from the roots we have a long and twisty way to go through Common Eldarin and so forth...