The Maiden of the Sun who guided the solar orb through the heavens after it was created (S/99). Her name is likely a compound of árë “sunlight” and the feminine suffix -ien.
Conceptual Development: When she first appeared, this character’s name was ᴱQ. Urwen(di) “Sun-maiden” (LT1/179, LT1A/Urwen), combining the early name of the Sun, ᴱQ. Ûr, with ᴱQ. wen(di) “maiden”. Her name was later revised to ᴹQ. Úrien (SM/97, SM/170) >> ᴹQ. Árien (SM/99, 168) >> ᴹQ. Arien (LR/243, Ety/AR¹).
In later writings, the name sometimes appeared with the long Á (PE17/148, MR/376) but usually had a short A, and this is the form appearing in the later drafts and published versions of The Silmarillion (MR/136, 198; S/99). In his late notes on the cosmology of Middle-earth, Tolkien consider numerous variant forms for this name: Áren, Ār(i), Ārië, Āzië and even a (rejected) masculine form Auron (MR/376, 380), but none of these variants appeared in the narratives. The early form Úrien also briefly reappeared in some linguistic note from the 1950s (PE21/86).
The first line of Alcar i Ataren, Tolkien’s translation of the Gloria Patri prayer. The first word is alcar “glory” followed by dative clauses: i Ataren “for the Father” (atar dative), ar i Yondon “and for the Son” (yondo dative), ar i Airefean “and for the Holy Spirit” (Airefëa dative).
Decomposition: Broken into its constituent elements, this phrase would be:
> alcar i Atar-en ar i Yondo-n ar i Aire-fea-n = “✱glory [be] Father-to and the Son-to and the holy-spirit-to”
Conceptual Development: Before airefean, Tolkien first wrote and rejected faire aistan, the first word meaning “spirit” and the second a dative form of the adjective aista “holy”.