: Well, I've since moved on to finishing the essay but the name stays with me. I'm not enough of a linguist to understand how to break the words down. I believe "tyrn" is the plural of "toron, torn" (brother). "Gorthad" seems to be a combination of two words, the second one possibly a variant of "atta" (two) or "adu" (double). "Gor" is the hard part. There are several possible candidates, I think, which could mean "vigor, vigour", "dread, horror", "round,rounded", etc.

Hmmm, my first post didn't seem to have made it. Here it is again.

The simplest translation is that it simply means barrow downs. Tyrn could be the Sindarin word for downs, like Emyn is for hills and ered is for mountains. If Gor- is the correct root, the round meaning is more likely since barrows were rounded mounds.

I saw one web site that had the plural of torn as tyrn, but I think that was just a guess. On the other hand, the plural of curu is cyru, which leads to a singular of turn, not torn.

Regarding Gor- we also have to take into account that when a root is used in an adjective, the first letter may change. For example, green is calen, but Green Isle is Tol Galen. Thus the root may be Cor- nor Gor-. Does anyone know etymology of Cormallon??

Russ