As I mentioned in elmwood’s “Gaydar of Caldor” thread, whenever I’m making characters in a fantasy story who are elves, I like to break out my copy of LOTR or the Silmarillion and use the elements in Quenya and Sindarin naming sections to construct ‘true’ elven names.
Now, in order to make names that sound nice and look feminine for my female characters, this means I often end up with names ending in -driel or -wen, which isn’t a problem since it’ll be one character in any given game, story, etc.
But I’ve been playing around with a concept lately that would have a significant part of the story in an elven kingdom, and so I need to have a good number of names that don’t sound too much alike. I’ve been playing around with the guide today, but haven’t had much luck.
I know I do this a lot (ask for help with some niggling detail or naming dilemma in one of my pet projects), but you guys always humor me and do a good job. I know there’s a lot of fellow Tolkien fans here (as evidenced by the excellent “LOTR questions” thread eleanorigby started recently), so does anyone of care to cook up some names (that aren’t already in the Middle Earth canon) for me?
PS. Male names are welcome too, but since I generally don’t have as hard a time there, I’m more interested in girl’s names. Oh, and it would be cool if you could post the meanings.
So far I’ve got the following elf women:
Mírdriel Dúanna : “maiden crowned with a jeweled garland” “night-gift”
Galwen Palanraen : “green maiden” “far and wide wanderer”
Carandriel (“Caran”) : “maiden crowned with a red garland”
Laurelótë Hîn Erain : “golden flower” “children of the kings”
for men:
Kalfindel Kilchamlith (“Kal”) : “shining hair” “follows holding ashes” (<–very roughly)
Narchamion Serendil (“Narc”) : “holding fire” “blood oath” (both kind of rough)
Arandil Cúgalen : “king oath” “green bow” (he’s a monarchist ranger)
Nolgil Dúanna : “knowledge of the stars” (little sketchy translation) “night gift”