Questions about a cobbled-together name, “ Tarwëndil”

Hi there,

So, I was trying to put together an elvish name that means ‘Friend of the Cross’ (as in, the cross of Christ). I came up with Tarwëndil using...pretty simply, tarwë=cross and -ndil=friend.

I have two questions, the second one with two parts:

1) Does this work? I just stuck together two pieces without knowing the language and...from other languages I know, you can’t always do that.

And 2) I was—admittedly—disappointed upon returning to Elfdict to see that Tarwë is ‘fan invented’ (I mean..,the name I’m putting together is ‘fan invented’ too, but still). What exactly does that mean? Is it built on other Quenya roots / words? For instance, would Tolkien have been likely to recognize it for what it is?

And secondly, is there, perhaps, a more ‘Tolkienian” way to form this name that I might be missing?

Thanks very much for any help!

-Christopher

Oh, and one more thing, for Tarwendil—bearing in mind that it is using that Qenya form—would the pronunciation be Tar-wĕn-dĭl (short ‘e’ and ‘i’ sounds)? And would you emphasize it, TARwendil, or tarWENdil, or....some other way?

Approximating English pronunciation, “tar-WEN-dil,” with the second and third syllables rhyming with “when” and “deal” respectively.

Navigate to this IPA reader, paste /tarˈwɛndil/ into the query bar, select “Carla [Italian]” from the voice dropdown, and click “Read” for a pretty good Elvish accent.

Wow, excellent, thank you....did not know about the ‘deal’ sounding ending, That’s helpful. (I was just going on how I’ve heard ‘Eärendil” pronounced....and...I guess it’s been wrong.) Thanks!

Hello again!

I have two more questions for the name Tarwendil.

First, is the diaeresis (Tarwëndil) optional, or actually incorrect to include? I know it is over the ‘e’ in Tarwë....but when the -ndil suffix is added, does that make it incorrect, or simply unnecessary?

Secondly, I know that Röandil said that the ‘dil’ should rhyme with ‘deal’...but my question is this: is the ‘deal’ pronunciation simply an approximation of the ‘elvish accent’, such that an ‘American accent’ would pronounce it simply ‘dill’?

As an example, the name Pascal, with a French accent (as it would originally have had) would be pronounced Pahs-kahl....whereas the American accent is Pascal with the ‘a’s being more like the ‘a’ in ‘Apple’.......In a similar way, could it be said that an ‘American accent’ for Tarwendil would be ‘Tar’ ‘when’ ‘dill’?

Sorry, but I just want to get these things clear. I really appreciate your expertise here on this site and there’s no better authorities to go to in regards to these questions. I’m grateful for any help!

The diaeresis over the e in Tolkien's Quenya texts simply means that the e is not silent, it is pronounced in that position. He used it in his published works because in English e is very often silent in the word-final position, whereas in Quenya the e is always pronounced, so he wanted to make sure that his readers could pronounce the words correctly. So in Tarwendil there is no need to use them, because the e in that word would never be silent, even if it were an English word.

The -dil part of the word (in my interpretation) indeed matches the pronunciation of English "dill" (the herb) (IPA [dil]), with a short i. I don't know about American accents, I feel that in British English (at least Southern British) "deal" would have a long i.

Wonderful! Thanks so much for this explanation, Tamas!

In a similar way, could it be said that an ‘American accent’ for Tarwendil would be ‘Tar’ ‘when’ ‘dill’?

I’d support that, yes. A speaker of American English would likely rhyme the last syllable with “dill” rather than “deal” in that position.

The -dil part of the word (in my interpretation) indeed matches the pronunciation of English "dill" (the herb) (IPA [dil]), with a short i. I don't know about American accents, I feel that in British English (at least Southern British) "deal" would have a long i.

“Dill” is rather [dɪɫ] in almost all dialects of English; the difference isn’t so much quantitative — “long” vs. “short” — as qualitative: tense/close [i] vs. lax/near-close [ɪ].

Yes, you are right. It's the Quenya pronunciation that is supposed to be [dil].