Posted: February 09, 2000 at 05:58:47: by David Freitag
There's a bit more to it than that. Tolkien was meticulous in his words. I've no doubt "cair" means "rock" in an old language, probably Celtic language: see anmes like Caernarvon and, as was mentioned, cairn, which is Scottish insofar as the dude in the kilt in the faded photo at my grandmother's house (her father) is Mr. Cairns. That word may be at he root of Lewis's Cair Paravel, his was not a systematic nomenclature.
This form of "cair" may lie at the root of one of Tolkien's names : the Carrock, the rocky isle in the upper Anduin that Beorn called the Carrock, "because he calls such things Carrocks and it is the only one around these parts," a Gandalfian explanation. That name is an example of a word that repeats itself in two languages: Rockrock. There is a technical name for that sort of thing which escapes me.But Cair Andros is an entirely different thing. In Gondor, Sindarin was used for names. Cair Andros is "Ship of Foam."
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