fen

door

_ n. _door. Q. fenna. >> fennas

fen

noun. door, threshold

fen hollen

place name. Closed Door, Shut Door

Door to the crypts of Minas Tirith, so called “for it was kept ever shut save at times of funeral” (LotR/826). This is name is translated “Shut Door” or “Closed Door”, a combination of fend “door” and hollen “closed” (PE17/98, RC/550). As an adjective, the second element should undergo soft mutation to chollen, and in his “Unfinished Index” of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien admitted that the proper form of this name would be Fen Chollen (RC/550). Tolkien published the name as Fen Hollen, no doubt motivated by the desire to prevent mispronunciation of the name, the same reasoning his son Christopher Tolkien used for changing the name Narn i Chîn Húrin to Narn i Hîn Húrin in the published version of The Silmarillion.

Conceptual Development: In Lord of the Rings drafts from the 1940s, this name first appeared as N. Fenn Forn(en) “Closed Door”, with the variation N. Fenn Uiforn “Ever Closed [Door]” (WR/338, 341).

fend

noun. door, door; [N.] threshold

A word appearing as fend “door” in notes on the Common Eldarin Article (CEA) from 1969 (PE23/136). In notes from December 1959 (D59), Tolkien gave it as fen “door” derived from the root √PHEN, with a Quenya equivalent as fenna indicating a primitive form of ✱phennā (PE17/181). In The Lord of the Rings proper, it was an element in the name Fen Hollen “Closed Door” (LotR/826; RC/550); perhaps fen is a reduced pseudo-prefixal form of fenn/fend.

Conceptual Development: In The Etymologies of the 1930s Tolkien had N. fenn “threshold” derived from ON. phenda under the root ᴹ√PHEN (Ety/PHEN). In Lord of the Rings drafts from the 1940s it appeared as fenn in Fenn Forn(en) and similar variants, all earlier names for Fen Hollen (WR/341).

Neo-Sindarin: I don’t think the senses “door” and “threshold” are likely to coexist, and for purposes of Neo-Sindarin I would limit fend to “door”.

Fen Hollen

noun. closed door

fen (“door”), [His.] hollen, sollen? (p.p. from hol- or sol- “close”)

fen(n)

noun. door

Fen Hollen

Fen Hollen

Fen Hollen is a Sindarin name meaning "shut door", consisting of fen ("door") and hollen ("shut").

both

noun. fen, marsh, fen, marsh; [N.] puddle, small pool

The word N. both first appeared in The Etymologies of the 1930s with the gloss “puddle, small pool” as a derivative of the root ᴹ√MBOTH (Ety/MBOTH). It reappeared in Quenya Notes (QN) from 1957 as a derivative of √MOT “fen, marsh”, apparently of the same meaning, along with variants moth and amoth. For purposes of Neo-Sindarin, I’d use the form both and retain the 1957 and 1930s senses as derivations of slightly different roots.

lô dhaer

place name. Great Fen

Name of a marsh at the junction of the rivers Ringló and Morthond meet appearing in Tolkien’s notes on The Rivers and Beacon-hills of Gondor (VT42/14). It was translated “Great Fen”, but the part of the paragraph where it appeared was rejected. This name is a combination of l(h)ô “fenland” and the lenited form of daer “great”.

fend

door

(threshold), construct fen, pl. find, coll. pl. fennath, 2) fennas (gateway), pl. fennais, coll. pl. fennassath, 3) annon (great gate), pl. ennyn

(a)moth

noun. fen, marsh

(h)law

noun. flood

annon

noun. great door or gate

duinen

noun. flood, high tide

hlô

noun. flood

n. flood.

lisg

noun. reed, reed, [G.] sedge

A word appearing as an element in the name Lisgardh “Land of Reeds” (UT/34).

Conceptual Development: An earlier version of this name was G. Arlisgion or Garlisgion “Place of Reeds” (LT2/153; GL/67), which contained G. lisg or lisc “reed, sedge” from the Gnomish Lexicon of the 1910s (GL/54). This became ᴱN. lhesg “sedge” in Early Noldorin Word-lists of the 1920s (PE13/148).

lô

flood

n. flood.

lisc

reed

lisc, no distinct pl. form.

lisc

reed

no distinct pl. form.****