rómen

noun. east, uprising, sunrise

The Quenya word for “east”, cognate of S. rhûn (LotR/1123). In inflected or compounds forms, the final n was usually dropped as was generally the case with Quenya direction words, for example in the ablative from Rómello “from the East” (LotR/377). It was ultimately derived from the root √RŌ/ORO “rise” (PE17/63, Ety/RŌ). It originally meant “rising direction”, that is ro- + men, and was thus connected to the rising sun.

Conceptual Development: In the earliest Lost Tales the word for “East” was ᴱQ. oronto (LT1/85), a word that also appeared in the Qenya Lexicon from the 1910s, with the gloss “rising (of the sun)” (QL/70). On the same page Tolkien gave the word ᴱQ. óre “the dawn, Sunrise, East” (QL/70), so the connection between “East” and “sunrise” was a very early idea.

The word ᴹQ. rómen “east” appeared in The Etymologies from the 1930s along with N. rhûn, both derived from ᴹ√RŌ (Ety/RŌ). At the time, there were no problems with this equivalence, since [[n|initial [r] was unvoiced]] in Noldorin. Tolkien went on to use both these forms in The Lord of the Rings.

Unfortunately, Tolkien later abandoned the unvoicing of initial r in Sindarin, making these two forms problematic. Tolkien considered modifying the Sindarin form to rûn (PE17/88) or the Quenya form to hrómen (PE17/18). The latter was probably derived from an s-strengthened form of the root ᴹ√SRŌ (PE22/127), where the initial sr- would become voiceless [r] in both Quenya and Sindarin. Ultimately, though, he left both forms alone. Perhaps he decided the s-strengthening of the root was a Sindarin-only variant.