Mardorunando

redeemer of the world

Mardorunando noun "Redeemer of the world" (VT44:17). Unless the initial element mardo- is a distinct and otherwise unattested word for "world", it may be the genitive form of mar (mard-) "earth", q.v.

mardorunando

proper name. *Redeemer of the World

A name or title of Christ as the redeemer of the world, used in Tolkien’s Quenya translation of the Litany of Loreto prayer (VT44/12).

Possible Etymology: The first element is the genitive form mardo (“of the World”) of the noun mar(da), elsewhere translated as “dwelling” (PE17/107). This word (and its relative már) did not usually mean “World” in Tolkien’s later writings, but the earlier form ᴹQ. mar (mard-) was sometimes glossed “Earth” in his writing from the 1930s (LR/72, Ety/MBAR in Martano “Earthbuilder” and Endamar “Middle-earth”). Alternately, this may have been a restoration of the much earlier ᴱQ. marda “world”. In later writings, the usual Quenya word for “World” was Ambar.

The second element of this name is runando, apparently meaning “redeemer”.

runando

redeemer

#runando noun "redeemer", isolated from Mardorunando masc. name "Redeemer of the world" (VT44:17)

a eruion mardorunando, eru órava (o)messë

God, the Son, Redeemer of the world, have mercy on us

The seventh line of Tolkien’s Quenya translation of the Litany of Loreto prayer (VT44/12). The first word is the vocative a “O” followed by Eruion, a name for Christ as the “Son of God”. The third word Mardorunando seems to be a translation of “Redeemer of the World”. The fourth word Eru is Tolkien’s usual Quenya name for God. The phrase órava (o)messe “have mercy on us” is essentially the same as in the first line; see that entry for discussion.

Decomposition: Broken into its constituent elements, this phrase would be:

> a Eru-ion Mard-o-runando, Eru órava (o)me-sse = “✱o God-son world-of-redeemer, God have-mercy us-on”

Conceptual Development: Tolkien began two incomplete forms Io >> Yón before settling on Eruion. As in the first line, Tolkien first used the dative ómen for “on us” before revising it to the locative (o)messe (VT44/12, notes on line 7).

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-.

-ando

redeemer

-ando masculine agentive suffix, deleted in the Etymologies (VT45:16), but occurring in words Tolkien used later, like #runando "redeemer".

Aino

god

Aino noun "god", within Tolkien's mythos a synonym of Ainu (but since Aino is basically only a personalized form of aina "holy", hence "holy one", it could be used as a general word for "god") (PE15:72)

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.

aino

noun. god