menelvagor

masculine name. Orion, (lit.) Swordsman of the Sky

A name for Orion (LotR/1113), translated “Swordsman of the Sky” (LotR/1113), a combination of menel “the heavens” and the lenited form of magor “swordsman”.

In notes from 1969, Tolkien toyed with revising the etymology of this name, making the second element be bagor < ✶bakār in an attempt to remove m-mutation from Sindarin, but he seems to have quickly abandoned this idea (PE23/138 note #12).

Conceptual Development: In the Gnomish Lexicon from the 1910s, the name of Orion was given as G. Daimord “Shepherd of the Sky” (GL/29, 58).