már

home, house, dwelling

már (mar-) (2) noun "home, house, dwelling" (also "house" in the sense of family as in Mardil, q.v.). See mar above for references. In Mar-nu-Falmar, Mardil, and as final element in Eldamar, Fanyamar, Valimar, Vinyamar..

mélamar

home

mélamar noun "home", Exilic Quenya word of emotional sense: place of ones birth or the familiar places from which one has been separated (PE17:109). Mélamarimma noun "Our Home", an expression used by Exilic Noldor for Aman.

-bar

suffix. a region inhabited by a people

_ suff. _a region inhabited by a people. Only used in old names. Sindarin usually used -dor instead. Q. -mar. >> -dor

bar

noun. house, dwelling, home

bardh

home

{ð}_ n. _home, the (proper) place for one (or a community) to dwell in.

bardh

noun. home

A word for “home” appearing in draft notes from the 1960s discussing the root √MBAR, where it was contrasted with bâr “house, dwelling”:

> In Sindarin bar [< ✱mbăr-] (pl. bair) was used for a single house or dwelling, especially of the larger and more permanent sort; barð [< ✱mbardā̆] was much as English “home”, the (proper) place for one (or a community) to dwell in (PE17/164).

It was also contrasted with milbar “dear home” which was used for the “emotional senses ‘home’ as the place of one’s birth, or desire, or one’s home returned to after journey or exile” (PE17/164). In later versions of these notes on √MBAR, Tolkien mentioned bâr and milbar but not bardh (PE17/109).

Neo-Sindarin: Given its absense from the final version of the √MBAR notes, it is possible Tolkien abandoned bardh “home”. However, I prefer to retain it for purposes of Neo-Sindarin for the ordinary sense of “home”, and reserve milbar for one’s “emotional home” or “✱true home” from which one is currently separated, as opposed to the home that you are living now = bardh. I would use bâr primarily in the sense “house, dwelling”.

Cognates

• Q. mar(da) “dwelling, (great) house, residence, mansion, a thing or place dwelt in, home, dwelling, (great) house, residence, mansion, a thing or place dwelt in, home; [ᴱQ.] world” ✧ PE17/164

Derivations

• ✶mbarda ✧ PE17/164

Element in

• ᴺS. bardhon “inhabitant, native”
• ᴺS. bardhor “habitable”

Phonetic Developments

Development	Stages	Sources
✶mbardā̆ > barð	[mbarda] > [barda] > [barða] > [barð]	✧ PE17/164

Variations

• barð ✧ PE17/164

bâr

noun. house, dwelling, home, house, dwelling, home; [N.] earth

The basic Sindarin word for “house, dwelling, home” derived from the root √MBAR “settle, dwell” (PE17/109; PE17/164). This Sindarin word (unlike its Quenya counterpart már) can also be used to refer to the “house” of a clan or family, as in Bar Bëora “House of Bëor” (WJ/230) and Narn e·mbar Hador “✱Tale of the House of Hador” (MR/373). It could also mean “-home (for a people)” in compound names for regions as in Eglamar “Home of the Eglain” and Brithombar (WJ/379; S/120), but it seems this use was archaic and in more recent names the trend was to use dôr “land” (PE17/164).

This word appears as both bâr with long â and bar with short a. As a general rule, it has a long â when used as an independent word, following the general Sindarin principle whereby short vowels (usually) lengthened in monosyllables. It has a short vowel when appearing in compounds or as a “pseudo-prefix” in names like Bar-en-Danwedh “House of Ransom” (S/203).

Conceptual Development: This word dates all the way back to the Gnomish Lexicon of the 1910s, where (adverbial?) G. bar appeared as a variant of G. barthi or barai “at home, home” (GL/21). In the Gnomish Lexicon its noun form seems to be G. bara “home” (GL/21), but in the contemporaneous Gnomish Grammar it was bar “home” (GG/8). These Gnomish words were all derived from the early root ᴱ√MBARA “dwell, live” (QL/63).

In Gnomish Lexicon slips, Tolkien modified the word to G. bawr “house” derived from primitive ᴱ✶mbāră (PE13/116). In the Name-list to the Fall of Gondolin Tolkien had G. bar “dwelling” (PE15/21). In the Early Noldorin Grammar of the 1920s it was ᴱN. bâr “house”, though a change in its mutated form {i·bhar >>} i·mâr indicates some vacillation on its primitive form (PE13/120 and note #2). In Early Noldorin word-lists of this period it was bar “house” (PE13/138).

In The Etymologies of the 1930s it was N. bár “home” written in the margin next to the root ᴹ√MBAR “dwell, inhabit” (EtyAC/MBAR), but it also meant “Earth” in the name N. Barthan “Earth-smith” (Ety/TAN). In later notes (date unknown) this name was S. Barthan “World-artificer” (LT1A/Talka Marda). In notes on The Feanorian Alphabet from the 1930s it was †băr “home”, which became bār after vowels lengthened in monosyllables (PE22/36).

In notes from the 1960s, Tolkien described this word in some detail, first saying:

> In Sindarin bar [< ✱mbăr-] (pl. bair) was used for a single house or dwelling, especially of the larger and more permanent sort; barð [< ✱mbardā̆] was much as English “home”, the (proper) place for one (or a community) to dwell in (PE17/164).

Here it seems bar = “house, dwelling” but bardh = “home”. However, in a later iteration of these notes Tolkien said:

> There were thus tendencies both (a) for Noldorin terms for things peculiar to their culture to be translated into Sindarin forms or imitated ... Examples ... were (a) the use of Sindarin bâr (< ✱mbăr(a)) for “house” a settled built dwelling of a family, larger or smaller: in true Sindarin use it only denoted a small area in which some group had at last settled more or less permanently (PE17/164).

This was revised slightly to read:

> There was thus a tendency: (a) for Noldorin words and terms for things peculiar to their culture to be translated into Sindarin, or imitated ... Examples of these processes are: (a) the use of Sindarin bâr (< ✱mbăr(a)) for “house”: the permanent building serving as the home of a family, larger or smaller, though in genuine older Sindarin use this word referred to a (small) area, in which some group had at last settled, more or less permanently (PE17/164).

Both these later paragraph imply that the original sense of Sindarin bâr was something like “✱settlement (of a group or community)” but came to mean “house, dwelling” under the influence of Quenya már.

Of its uses in compounds Tolkien said:

> This was also in old compounds used (like Q -mar) for a region, but not in ordinary language ... Only in old names was -bar used like Q -mar for a region inhabited by a people. For this Sindarin used usually -dor (< ndor) “land” (PE17/165).

Cognates

• Q. már “home, dwelling, habitation, home, dwelling, habitation; [ᴹQ.] house; earth” ✧ PE17/164; SA/bar
• Q. mar(da) “dwelling, (great) house, residence, mansion, a thing or place dwelt in, home, dwelling, (great) house, residence, mansion, a thing or place dwelt in, home; [ᴱQ.] world” ✧ PE17/163; PE17/164

Derivations

• ✶mbar(ă) “dwelling, habitation” ✧ PE17/109; PE17/109; PE17/163; PE17/164; SA/bar
  • √MBAR “settle, dwell; establish, fix, decide, determine, make a decision, settle; establish, fix, decide, determine, make a decision; dwell, [ᴹ√] inhabit, [ᴱ√] live”

Element in

• ᴺS. aemar “rookery, colony of birds”
• S. alae! ered en Echoriath, ered e·mbar nín “[?behold!] the mountains of Echoriath, the mountains of my home!” ✧ UT/040; UT/054
• S. aran Gondor ar Arnor ar Hîr i Mbair Annui “king of Gondor and Arnor and Lord of the Westlands” ✧ AotM/062; SD/129
• S. Baravorn “Hamfast”
• S. Bar Bëora “House of Bëor”
• S. bardor “home land, native land” ✧ PE17/164
• S. Bar-en-Danwedh “House of Ransom” ✧ S/203; SA/bar
• S. Bar-en-Nibin-noeg “House of the Petty Dwarves” ✧ UT/100
• S. Bar Erib “*House of the Lonely Ones”
• S. Bar-goll “Hollow Dwelling” ✧ WJ/414
• S. Bar-in-Mŷl “Home of the Gulls” ✧ WJ/379
• S. Bar-in-Gwael ✧ WJ/418
• S. Barthan “World-artificer”
• S. Brithombar “*Brithon Home” ✧ SA/bar
• S. Dimbar “*Sad Home” ✧ SA/bar
• S. Edelbar “*Elf-home”
• S. Eglamar “Home of the Eglain”
• S. Bar Haleth
• S. i mbair en Ndengin “the houses of the Slain” ✧ PE17/097
• S. milbar “dear home, beloved dwelling [place]” ✧ PE17/164
• S. Narn e·mbar Hador “*Tale of the House of Hador” ✧ MR/373
• S. Ogolmar
• S. Othramar “?Stranger Home”
• ᴺS. thorombar “eagle’s nest, eyrie”

Phonetic Developments

Development	Stages	Sources
✶mbar(ă) > bâr	[mbara] > [mbar] > [bar]	✧ PE17/109
✶mbar(ă) > bâr	[mbara] > [mbar] > [bar]	✧ PE17/109
✶mbar > bar	[mbara] > [mbar] > [bar]	✧ PE17/163
✶mbā̆r > bar	[mbara] > [mbar] > [bar]	✧ PE17/164
✶mbā̆r > bair	[mbarī] > [mbari] > [bari] > [beri] > [beir] > [bair]	✧ PE17/164
✶mbár > bar	[mbar] > [bar]	✧ SA/bar

Variations

• bar ✧ PE17/163 (bar); PE17/164; PE17/164; SA/bar
• Bar ✧ S/203; UT/100; WJ/379; WJ/414; WJ/418

-dor

suffix. a region inhabited by a people

_ suff. _a region inhabited by a people. Usually used instead of -_bar _in Sindarin. >> -bar

bâr

home

bâr (dwelling, house, family; land, earth) (i mâr, o mbâr, construct bar), pl. bair (i mbair). Also -bar, -mar at the end of compounds.

bâr

home

(dwelling, house, family; land, earth) (i mâr, o mbâr, construct bar), pl. bair (i mbair). Also -bar, -mar at the end of compounds.