valandor

place name. Land of the Valar

An archaic name for Valinórë (SA/dôr, PE17/26), a compound of Vala and the suffix -ndor “land”.

Cognates

• S. Balannor “Land of the Valar” ✧ PE17/026

Elements

Word	Gloss
Vala	“(Angelic) Power, ‘God’, Authority, (Angelic) Power, Authority, God”
-ndor	“land, country”

valinórë

place name. Land of the Valar

Land of the Valar within Aman (S/37), a compound of Vali, an archaic plural of Vala, and nórë “land” (SA/val, dôr). It usually appeared in the shorter form Valinor. In older Quenya, this name would have meant “Valian folk”, but it was blended with archaic Valandor to get its current meaning (PE17/20, SA/dôr).

Conceptual Development: The name ᴱQ. Valinor appears in the earliest Lost Tales with essentially the same form and meaning (LT1/70), and its long form Valinōre appeared in the Qenya Lexicon (QL/66). The name ᴹQ. Valinor appeared in Silmarillion drafts from the 1930s (SM/12, 80; LR/110, 205), and in The Etymologies it already had the same derivation as given above (Ety/BAL, NDOR).

In the earlier stages, the name Aman had not yet been invented, so Valinor referred to the entire land of the West, not just the land of the Valar within it.

See ✶Bali(a)nōrē for a discussion of its complex etymology.

Cognates

• S. Balannor “Land of the Valar” ✧ PE17/026
• S. Dor-Rodyn “*Land of the Valar” ✧ MR/200

Derivations

• ✶Bali(a)nōrē “Valian folk” ✧ PE17/026; WJ/413

Element in

• Q. Nurtalë Valinóreva “the Hiding of Valinor” ✧ S/102
• Q. Yénië Valinóreo “Annals of Valinor” ✧ MR/200

Elements

Word	Gloss
Vala	“(Angelic) Power, ‘God’, Authority, (Angelic) Power, Authority, God”
nórë	“land, country; †people, race, tribe, land, country, [ᴹQ.] region where certain people live, [ᴱQ.] nation; [Q.] †people, race, tribe, [ᴹQ.] folk, [ᴱQ.] family”

Phonetic Developments

Development	Stages	Sources
✶Bali(a)nōrē > Valinórë	[balinōrē] > [βalinōrē] > [βalinōre] > [valinōre]	✧ PE17/026
✶Valinōrē > Valinóre	[balinōrē] > [βalinōrē] > [βalinōre] > [valinōre]	✧ WJ/413

Variations

• Valinor ✧ Let/198; LotRI/Valinor; MRI/Valinor; PE17/020; PE17/020; PE17/020; PE17/026; PE17/074; PE17/106; PMI/Valinor; RC/217; SA/val; SI/Valinor; UTI/Valinor; WJ/413; WJI/Valinor
• Valinóre ✧ PE17/074; PE17/106; WJ/413

Balannor

noun. land of Gods

Balan (“power, god”) + (n-)dor (“land, dwelling”)

Balannor

'the Land of the Valar'

topon. 'the Land of the Valar'. Q. Valandor.

balannor

place name. Land of the Valar

Sindarin cognate of Q. Valinórë (PE17/26), a compound of Balan “Vala” and dôr “land”.

Conceptual Development: The first cognates of ᴱQ. Valinor appeared in the Gnomish Lexicon from the 1910s: (rejected) G. Dor Banion and G. Gwalien (GL/21, LT2A/Valar). In The Etymologies of the 1930s, the cognate was N. Balannor (Ety/BAL), and this is the source of the derivation given above.

In a letter from 1972, Tolkien stated that Belain (plural of Balan) was not a word in Sindarin (Let/427). Furthermore, in Silmarillion revisions from the 1950s-60s, he changed the Sindarin name for the “Annals of Valinor” from N. Inias Valannor to S. Ínias Dor-Rodyn (MR/200). It is possible that Tolkien decided that the normal Sindarin word for the Vala was S. Rodon, so that S. Dor-Rodyn was the equivalent of Valinor.

Cognates

• Q. Valandor “Land of the Valar” ✧ PE17/026
• Q. Valinórë “Land of the Valar” ✧ PE17/026

Elements

Word	Gloss
Balan	“Vala, Vala, [N.] Power, God”
dôr	“land, land, [N.] region where certain people live, [ᴱN.] country; [G.] people of the land”

balannor

place name. land of the Gods in the West

Changes

• Balannor → Dor-Rodyn ✧ MR/200

Cognates

• ᴹQ. Valinor “Land of the Valar” ✧ Ety/BAL

Derivations

• On. Balandor “land of the Gods in the West” ✧ Ety/BAL; PE19/059
  • ᴹ✶balandore ✧ Ety/BAL
  • ᴹ✶balīndore ✧ PE19/059

Element in

• N. Inias Valannor “Annals of Valinor” ✧ MR/200

Phonetic Developments

Development	Stages	Sources
On. Balandor > Balannor	[balandor] > [balannor]	✧ Ety/BAL