Rohan names

[Herwìna]

I know I should probably go to some Tolkienite forum with this but omg so intimidating, I mean honestly even posting this here is intimidating! Tolkienite forums even moreso.

Soo, I took on this lil project of a fan fiction wherein Common speech, Rohan etc have not been translated. This of course leaves us with Frodo being Maura, Sam being Ben, Merry being Kali and Pippin being Razar, the Adûni equivalent of Strider having gone past my character's ears (because we don't know the Adûni equivalent at all), and some ginormous trouble with rohirrim names. Because they are all translated, with almost none of the Rohan equivalents known. We only know that Théoden's name is actually Tûrac, and Éowyn and Éomer's names include either »lô» or »loh», 'horse'.

Since Éowyn (=simplified 'horse-joy') will be an important-ish character in my fic, I wanted to try to translate Éowyn's name based on whatever info I can find. I happened to notice a similarity between the Adûni, Noldorin and Sindarin words for 'joy'; »kali», »gyel» and »gell», respectively, and since Adûnaic had no short E, I thought »gal» would make sense, if the word was borrowed from Sindarin or Noldorin.

Then there's Adûnaic »aphan», 'bliss', which is also something I guess could be considered. Thus I have

Lôphan

Lôgal(î)

Lôkal(î)

However, it is very well possible that kali was borrowed into Adûni much after the separation of Adûni and the language of Rohan, in which case Rohan would not have it, and then I guess Lôphan would make more sense.

In no way am I a linguist and for a linguist this all would probably seem like utter bulls***, so like... If you know more than I do, share your knowledge. Help, opinions, etc extremely welcome.

[Nyx]

Wow, I had no idea there was this much behind it, and probably even more. Sorry to get your hopes up with a reply, but I can't be of much help, I just wanted to say that it sounds really interesting and I hope you figure it out. But maybe you should check with councilofelrond.com, I used to hang out over there when I was trying to get into Sindarin, they're nice poeple and maybe they know something. Or if Lance R. Casey shows up, he's cool, knows way too much about way too many things

[Yawne Zize’ite]

For what it's worth, my guess is that the language of the Rohirrim and Adûnaic would have diverged ca. First Age 260, a generation or two before the Edain crossed into Beleriand. As a consequence, Rohirric wouldn't have picked up any words from Sindarin until the late Second Age or the Third Age (from the Mirkwood Elves in Wilderland, or from Gondorian Westron or the Sindarin picked up by nobles with a Gondorian education).

Unfortunately I'm not an expert on the Rohirric fragments, or Westron, or Adûnaic, and you've already collected all the information I could quickly find. However, most of the native Rohirric words look like they are derived from Elvish as well. Not Sindarin, but Avarin (Eastern) Elvish, the language of the Elves that the ancestors of the Rohirrim would have encountered. We know all but nothing about the Avarin languages - six words and a recently published list of sound changes that don't match up with the words - so just about anything could have happened to the Elvish words before they were borrowed into proto-Rohirric. Most likely initial r became l and medial kk weakened to kh (as in Sindarin) then h, which would turn Primitive Elvish *rokkō into Rohirric loho, which then becomes lô by dropping the h and the two o's turning into one long o.

The Primitive Elvish roots of obvious relevance are galás- "joy, be glad", gyel- "shout of triumph" (which developed the sense of "shout of joy" in Sindarin), and mer- "festive". "Gal" could come from either galás- (S. glass) or gyel- or both, depending on what sound changes occurred in the thousands and thousands of years between the very earliest Elvish and modern Rohirric, or for that matter between Old Rohirric and Modern Rohirric. In other words, you can make something up and no one can dispute it, as long as it's not wildly inconsistent with the scraps of Rohirric we know.

I second the recommendation of posting this on the Council of Elrond forums, so you can get a truly informed response.