Valinor

the land (or people) of the valar

Valinor place-name "the land (or people) of the Valar", *"Vali-land" (Vali = Valar), land of the Gods in the West (BAL, NDOR); cf. Valandor. Full form Valinórë (BAL; Vali-nórëunder NDOR).Said to be "the true Eldarin name of Aman", the latter name being explained as a borrowing from Valarin in some versions of the linguistic scenario (VT49:26). In the early "Qenya Lexicon", Valinor, Valinórë is glossed "Asgard", the name of the city of the gods in Norse mythology (LT1:272). It seems that in such more restricted use, Valinor is not the entire Blessed Realm but rather the specific region beyond the Pelóri where (most of) the Valar dwelt, with Val(i)mar as the chief city. Thus it is said of Eärendil that he "went into Valinor and to the halls of Valimar" only after he had already left his ship and ventured as far as Tirion (Silmarillion, chapter 24). Possessive Valinóreva in Nurtalë Valinóreva, the "Hiding of Valinor", the possessive case here assuming the function of object genitive (Silm); genitive Valinórëo in Yénië Valinórëo "Annals of Valinor" (MR:200; the last word was changed from Valinóren, Tolkien revising the genitive ending from -n to -o)

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

Valandor

the land of the valar

Valandor place-name "the land of the Valar", confused with and replaced by Valinórë "the people of the Valar", short form Valinor (SA:dôr, Silm)

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”

Valimar

vali-home

Valimar place-name "Vali-home" (Vali = Valar), the city of the Valar in Valinor, also in shorter form Valmar. Cf. the Silmarillion: "the city of Valimar where all is glad" (Valaquenta); "in the midst of the plain beyond the mountains they [the Valar] built their city, Valmar of many bells" (chapter 1). In Namárië, the word Valimar is used = Valinor, since Valimar was its chief city (Nam, RGEO:67)

Valinor

Valinor

Valinor (archaic Valinórë) is Quenya meaning "Land of Valar". There is also the name Valandor of roughly the same meaning. The terms Ever-eve or Evereven also referred to Valinor. In Hobbit lore, the mythical West was known as Faery.

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”