Mardil

(one) devoted to the house

Mardil masc. name, "(one) devoted to the house", sc. the "house" of the kings (Appendix A; interpreted in Letters:386). This indicates that the first element can mean "house" in the sense of family or household (see mar, már). This Mardil is described as a good steward, possibly suggesting that mardil ("one devoted to the house/family") could itself function as a common noun "(faithful) steward".

mardil

masculine name. Devoted to the House

Name of the first ruling steward of Gondor (LotR/670, 1039). Tolkien translated the name as “devoted to the house” (Let/386). It is a combination of mar(da) “house” and the suffix -(n)dil meaning “devoted to, -friend” (SA/bar, (n)dil).

Possible Etymology: In notes from the 1960s (PE17/106-7), Tolkien distinguished the word mar(da) (mard-) “house” and the word már “home” often used of the names of lands. The name Mardil might contain either, but I think marda “house” is more likely. Some authors have suggested that the “House” in this name may refer to the House (family) of the Kings of Gondor (QQ/már), but in Tolkien’s notes he said that these words were not used in this way (PE17/107).

Conceptual Development: This name first appeared in Lord of the Rings drafts from the 1940s as ᴹQ. Máraher the “Good Steward” but was quickly changed to ᴹQ. Mardil (WR/153).

Elements

Word	Gloss
mar(da)	“dwelling, (great) house, residence, mansion, a thing or place dwelt in, home, dwelling, (great) house, residence, mansion, a thing or place dwelt in, home; [ᴱQ.] world”
-(n)dil	“-friend, -lover; devotion, disinterested love”

mar

earth

mar (1) noun "earth" (world), also "home, dwelling, mansion". Stem mard- (VT46:13, PE17:64), also seen in the ablative Mardello "from earth" (FS); the word is used with a more limited sense in oromardi "high halls" (sg. oromar, PM17:64), referring to the dwellings of Manwë and Varda on Mt. Taniquetil (Nam, RGEO:66). The initial element of Mardorunando (q.v.) may be the genitive mardo (distinguish mardo "dweller"). May be more or less identical to már "home, house, dwelling" (of persons or peoples; in names like Val(i)mar, Vinyamar, Mar-nu-Falmar, Mardil) (SA:bar, VT45:33, VT47:6). Már is however unlikely to have the stem-form mard-; a "Qenya" genitive maren appears in the phrase hon-maren, q.v., suggesting that its stem is mar-. A possible convention could therefore be to use már (mar-) for "home, house" (also when = household, family as in Mardil, q.v.), whereas mar (mard-) is used for for "earth, world". Early "Qenya" has mar (mas-) "dwelling of men, the Earth, -land" (LT1:251); notice that in LotR-style Quenya, a word in -r cannot have a stem-form in -s-.

már

home, house, dwelling

már (mar-) (2) noun "home, house, dwelling" (also "house" in the sense of family as in Mardil, q.v.). See mar above for references. In Mar-nu-Falmar, Mardil, and as final element in Eldamar, Fanyamar, Valimar, Vinyamar..

mélamar

home

mélamar noun "home", Exilic Quenya word of emotional sense: place of ones birth or the familiar places from which one has been separated (PE17:109). Mélamarimma noun "Our Home", an expression used by Exilic Noldor for Aman.

cemi

earth, soil, land

cemi noun "earth, soil, land"; Cémi ("k")"Mother Earth" (LT1:257; the "Qenya" word cemi would correspond to cemen in LotR-style Quenya)

kemen

earth

kemen noun "earth"; see cemen.