Hello everyone,
I am trying to develop an elvish name for my husband and I felt the most fitting name for him would be Beautiful/fair Hero but I am having some trouble developing the name in either Quenya or Sindarin, here is what I have.
Vancallo (quenya)
Bancallon (Sindarin, unclear on which word for hero would be proper to use here)
Any help is greatly appreciated I am very new to this!
There are two attested formations for the word "hero":
Using Q. callo / S. callon you will get Q. Vanyacallo and S. Banchallon.
Using S. thalion you can also have S. Bastalion.
Ellanto,
thank you so much for the help! you had also helped my husband create my Quenya name several weeks back so your expertise is very appreciated. I personally like Vanyacallo the most, could you help me with the pronunciation?
Thank you!
Sure thing! I'm always happy to help.
The pronunciation of Vanyacallo is fairly straightforward.
The 'ny' is a single consonant, which can be approximated as a 'n' sound immediately followed by a slight soft consonantal 'y' (as in English yell); the 'ny' in Quenya is the same as the Spanish 'ñ', if you are familiar with it (though bear in mind that Quenya uses 'ñ' for a completely different sound itself). You can here the sound of the Quenya 'ny' / Spanish 'ñ' here.
The 'c' is always pronounced like a 'k'. In fact, if you prefer, you may spell the name as Vanyakallo as well - Tolkien did so himself quite often.
The 'l' is not a dark L sound, but the one you hear in English light; since here you have two of them in a row, you need to hold it a bit longer.
The vowel 'a' (in all positions) is the one you have in English father, like this; the 'o' vowel at the end is the one you hear in English for, like this.
The primary stress falls on the penultimate syllable, vanyaCAllo; there's also a weaker secondary stress on the first syllable, but don't worry about it too much.
If it helps, the IPA transcription of Vanyacallo would be [ˌvɑ̟.ɲɑ̟.ˈkɑ̟l.lɔ].
Feel free to ask more questions if you need any more clarification!