rohan
place name. Riddermark, (lit.) Horse-country
rochand
place name. Rohan, Horse-country
Archaic form of the name Rohan (LotR/1115), a combination of roch “horse” and the archaic suffix †-ian(d) “land” (Let/382).
Conceptual Development: In Lord of the Rings drafts from the 1940s, the form (ON.?) Rochan(dor) implies a different history for this name (RS/435).
Rohan (AS Rochand)
noun. horse country
roh (from roch “horse”) + and (commonly used suffix in the names of regions and countries)
rohald
proper name. Rohald
The (untranslated) name of Gandalf’s horse in unpublished 1960 revisions to The Hobbit; John Rateliff suggested it might be a Sindarin name with the first element meaning “horse”, as in S. Rohan; the meaning of the second element is unclear (HH/876 note #2). As a Sindarin name, Rohald presents some difficulties, as -ld cannot occur finally in Sindarin, but the name is clearly not Quenya either and there is no other good explanation for the name.
The home of the Rohirrim, translated “Riddermark” (LotR/262) or more literally “Horse-country” (RC/241). It is a combination of roch “horse” and -(i)an “-land”, with the [[s|[x] (“ch”) softening to [h] in Gondorian pronunciation]] (LotR/1113).
Conceptual Development: In Lord of the Rings drafts from the 1940s, this land was first named N. Thanador of unclear meaning, which underwent several revisions (Ulthanador, Borthendor, Orothan[ador]) before Tolkien settled on N. Rohan (RS/434). At this earlier stage, Tolkien posited that this name developed from (ON.?) Rochan(dor); Tolkien coined the archaic form †Rochand later, while working on the drafts of the Lord of the Rings appendices (PM/53).