Celebrian’s Heritage

Celebrian is a mix of all three elvish kindreds, yes. And while Tolkien wrote many multi-cultural elves (like, as you pointed out, Galadriel and Finarfin), he tends to associate them primarily with the patrilineal culture.  So, even though Finarfin is 50% Noldorin and 50% Vanyarin, because his father is Noldorin Finarfin is generally associated with…

Oropher and the Battle of Dagorlad

When the Last Alliance was formed, the two major leaders were Elendil (representing men) and Gil-galad (representing elves.) However, there were others who joined the alliance that, while separate people, ended up falling somewhere underneath the umbrella of these two great leaders. The Sindar/Silvan elves of Mirkwood and Lorien are an example of this. Their…

Ok I’d consider this a minor question, but I just recently found out that the word Sindarin is actually from Quenya and not Sindarin itself. This made me think about the whole translation process. I imagined that the stories known from middle earth were collected and written down by a sindarin scholar like a history book and therefore written down in Sindarin. But he wouldn’t have used the word Sindar to describe his people which lets me think why the English version suddenly uses Quenya again.

This question sort of has two different answers, so forgive the awkward structure: “Sindar” is a Quenya Name So, fun fact: the Sindar actually didn’t have a name for themselves. Because, after everyone else sailed west to Valinor, they basically figured they were the only elves around, so they simply called themselves the Edhil, the…

Anonymous asked: “Hi! Just a quick question – as far as I understand, the Teleri are just kind of a closely-related branch to the Sindar (which are more pure, blood-wise, I guess), but instead of speaking Sindarin, which would personally make sense, I think, they speak a supposedly independent language similar to Quenya. Is that correct?”

Not so much, actually. The Teleri are one of the three original cultural groups of the elves (you can read more about that in this post), and the Sindar are an off-shoot of that group that separated due to geographical issues (the Sindar lived in Middle Earth, while the central Telerin group sailed to Valinor), blood purity had nothing to do with it. And while they all originally spoke Common Telerin, over the thousands of years that they spent apart, the Sindar’s language developed to what we now know of as Sindarin (you can read more about the languages in this post.) And for a more detailed discussion of the various sub-groups within the Teleri, take a look at this post.

((The map is an excerpt from Karen Wynn Fonstad’s Atlas of Middle Earth))

The First Battle of Beleriand: Cirdan in the West

While Thingol and the elves of Doriath and Laiquendi are victorious in the east, Cirdan hasn’t had nearly as much luck in the west. His army is defeated by the attacking orcs, and so they retreat to the coastal cities of Eglarest and Brithombar. There the orcs lay siege, and Cirdan’s people are trapped. Thingol…

Sindarin Hair

The best general description of Sindarin hair that we get from Tolkien comes from one of his linguistic essays, “Quendi and Eldar”, where he says: On the origin of this name see Note 11. The Loremasters also supposed that reference was made to the hair of the Sindar. Elwe himself had indeed long and beautiful…

Anon asked: “Apparently, there are many Elvish languages and I can’t really get them straight. What languages are there, and where (and when) are they spoken?”

So, here you you! A little disclaimer: I didn’t put as much careful research into this as I might have, and it relies more heavily on secondary sources than I generally prefer. But Tolkien wrote so much on language that I could have been in the research stage of this post for weeks and still have tons of work to do. So consider this a sort of quick, casual guide to the realm of elvish linguistics. 

PS: The maps are excerpts from Karen Wynn Fonstad’s Atlas of Middle Earth

PPS: I didn’t include any of the Sindarin-speaking men in these maps. Technically, the men of Gondor spoke Sindarin, but in their own dialect. But since they aren’t elves, I decided not to include them.

Elvish Knowledge of Reembodiment

(First off, for those who don’t know about this yet, here is the post explaining the elvish afterlife and the concept of reembodiment.) The answer to this question depends on which elves you’re talking about. In a discussion of the elvish afterlife, Tolkien wrote: What then happened to the houseless fea? The answer to this…

In my Noldorin fancast post I mentioned that my personal image of the Telerin/Sindarin elves is a definite East Asian look, so here’s my cast for the Teleri and Sindar of the Silmarillion:

• Thingol: Zhang Fengyi
• Olwe: Kitamura Kazuki
• Cirdan: Andy On
• Dior: Remi Hii
• Elwing: Sei Ashina
• Luthien: Zhu Zhu
• Beleg: Uhm Tae Woong
• Mablung: Yoshizawa Hisashi
• Earwen: Zhang Ziyi

(And, again, I know that the hair colors don’t always match up, but just use your imagination for that, lol.)

“Pre-Contact” Silvan Elves

There isn’t too much information about the Silvan/Nandorin elves of the early Second Age (that is, before Galadriel and various Sindarin elves arrived and a few of them apparently volunteered themselves to become their kings and Sindarize their culture.) Probably the best description we have comes from “The History of Galadriel and Celeborn”, which says:…