formenos

place name. Northern Fortress

Stronghold of Fëanor in the north of Valinor (S/71). It is a compound of formen “north” and the suffixal form -os of osto “city, fortress” (SA/formen, os(t)).

Formen

north

Formen noun "north" (SA:men), also name of tengwa #10 (Appendix E, PHOR, MEN; replacing the rejected form Tormen). In Formenos, place-name "Northern Fortress" (SA:formen). Allative formenna, VT49:26.

formen

noun. north, north, [ᴹQ.] right-hand [direction]

The Quenya word for “north” and the name of tengwa #10 (LotR/1123). It is a combination of ᴹ√PHOR “right-hand” and √MEN “way”, so named because it is the direction to the right when facing west (PE17/18; PE22/23; Ety/PHOR, MEN). It is also the name of the region of the north which in English would be “the North” but Quenya just has Formen without the definite article (PE23/133).

Conceptual Development: The Qenya Lexicon of the 1910s had ᴱQ. póme “north” under the early root ᴱ√PO (QL/74) along with a variant poar (QL/75), both of which were also mentioned in the contemporaneous Poetic and Mythological Words of Eldarissa (PME/75). The Ambarkanta of the early 1930s at first had Tormen for “north”, but this was revised for Formen both there and in The Etymologies from 1937 (SM/244; Ety/MEN) and Tolkien used formen thereafter.

Tormen

north

[Tormen] noun "north" (MEN; replaced by Formen, q.v.)