Primitive elvish

nō/ono

root. beget, give birth to; be born, beget, give birth to; be born; [ᴱ√] become

This root was associated with Elvish words for “birth” for most of Tolkien’s life. It first appeared as ᴱ√ “become, be born” in the Qenya Lexicon of the 1910s with derivatives like ᴱQ. nosta- “give birth to; cause” and ᴱQ. nosse “folk, kin, people” (QL/66). Likewise in the contemporaneous Gnomish Lexicon there was G. nosta- “am born” and G. nothri “family, kinship” (GL/61), and in the Name Lists for to The Fall of Gondolin (NFG), G. nos was used as the equivalent of ᴱQ. nosse (PE15/22, 24). Both Q. nossë and S. nos(s) appeared regularly in Tolkien’s later writings.

In The Etymologies of the 1930s Tolkien gave ᴹ√NŌ/ONO “beget” as an invertible root, with derivatives of the inverted form including ᴹQ. onta- “beget, create” and N. odhron “parent” (Ety/NŌ, ONO). The invertible root appeared regularly in Tolkien’s later writings, usually with the sense “beget” but in one place also glossed “be born” (PE17/170).

Primitive elvish [PE17/026; PE17/106; PE17/107; PE17/111; PE17/168; PE17/169; PE17/170; PE17/171; VT48/25; WJ/387; WJ/413] Group: Eldamo. Published by