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Re: The meaning of "Tyrn Gorthad" | White Council Forum Archive - msg 7577

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Topic: Re: The meaning of "Tyrn Gorthad"    Reply to: msg 7572
Posted: January 04, 19100 at 18:41:38: by Michael Martinez
: : 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 don't believe the name means "barrow downs". I don't know if there is any extant word for "barrow" in Sindarin. Haudh-en-Arwen is translated as "Ladybarrow" in the index to THE SILMARILLION but "haudh" is translated as "mound" in other entries. Tur Haretha appears to be the name of Hareth's burial mound in her people's native language (or maybe Adunaic, though I don't know why they would be using that language so early in their history).

: 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.

Well, the entry for "Tor" in "The Etymologies" has many variations for "brother", including "torni" and "otorno", so my deduction is a little weak. But "or" always seems to shift to "yr" to make a plural (at least, in the examples I was able to find that was the case).

: 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??

Gor- denotes haste, violence, impetus. Another root "gor" could mean horror or dread.

Khor- dropped the initial "k", but "kor" produced "gorn" derivations. "kor" means "round".

I suppose Tyrn Gorthad could mean "hills of the two brethren" but that doesn't mean anything to me (in a historical perspective). Unless it relates to the division of Arnor in some fashion.
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