Hello! I'm an embroiderer curious about Quenya and Sindarin names for "cross stitch", "beadwork" and for the name of my online shop, "Lakeview Needlework". Could you please translate them for me?
It is not surprising perhaps but Tolkien didn't exactly leave us a great number of Quenya or Sindarin words related to embroidery or sewing. There are a few words in the earliest versions of his languages that are or may be related to them, but they have different forms and phonetics when compared to the Q or S we know from his published works. So if one wants them to be usable they need to be "updated" to match the phonetics and grammar of later Q (I will not be tackling Sindarin as I know much less about that). So in Quenya we have:
nelma "needle" serinde "seamstress" sehte "bead" #quinte "stitch" tarwe "cross" (=the cross shape, or a physical cross) #série "sewing" (which could be used for "needlework") #sehte-netyare "bead-adornment, bead-trimming" = "beadwork"
The # before the words here indicates that they are updated words which cannot be found in Tolkien's writings as is.
Thank you!
If quinte is unacceptably old, I guess one could use the Quenya word for "point"? It's point de croix/punto cruz etc. in Romance languages, and even English has the term "needlepoint". Or simply tarweserië sounds good enough.
Sehte-netyare - very nice!
Well, quinte was quint when Tolkien invented it, but I updated it to quinte to fit in with the phonology of Quenya as we know it. So it is strictly speaking a NeoQuenya word, or "neologism". But if anyone disputes its validity you can always direct them to this discussion here:)
As I use Elvish words in a Russian Tolkienist blog, I personally prefer what isn't awkward in Cyrillic (and tarwequinte is), but of course it's perfectly usable otherwise. I'd give this word to the Teleri and change quinte to pinte in my headcanon, that would remove awkwardness.