serni
noun. shingle, pebble bank
Cognates
- Q. sarnië “shingle, pebble bank” ✧ UTI/Serni; VT42/11
Derivations
- ✶sarniye “shingle, pebble bank” ✧ VT42/11
Element in
- S. Serni “Pebble Bank”
Elements
Word Gloss sarn “(small) stone, pebble; stony (place), (small) stone, pebble; stony (place); [N.] stone as a material” -i “adjectival suffix” Phonetic Developments
Development Stages Sources ✶sarniye > Serni [sarnije] > [sarnīe] > [sernīe] > [sernī] > [serni] ✧ VT42/11 Variations
- Serni ✧ UTI/Serni; VT42/10; VT42/11
serni
place name. Pebble Bank
A river in Gondor appearing on the maps of The Lord of the Rings (LotR/1186). In his discussion of the The Rivers and Beacon-hills of Gondor, Tolkien indicated this name was a collective noun or adjectival formation meaning “shingle, pebble bank” (VT42/11).
Conceptual Development: In Lord of the Rings drafts from the 1940s, the name N. Serni appears in a list of rivers (TI/312, WR/436).
Elements
Word Gloss serni “shingle, pebble bank”
serni
shingle
serni (i herni, o serni) (pebble-bank), no distinct pl. form except with article (i serni)
serni
shingle
(i herni, o serni) (pebble-bank), no distinct pl. form except with article (i serni)
serni
pebble-bank
serni (i herni, o serni) (shingle), no distinct pl. form except with article (i serni)
serni
pebble-bank
(i herni, o serni) (shingle), no distinct pl. form except with article (i serni)
A noun for a “shingle, pebble bank” in The Rivers and Beacon-hills of Gondor from the late 1960s from primitive ✶sarniye, the basis for the river name S. Serni (VT42/11). Here the gloss “shingle” is used in the sense of a mass of smell pebbles rather than as a roofing tile. This word is an unusual example of a final -i in Sindarin, because the i was protected by the final e that was itself lost. Tolkien indicated it might instead be an adjective formation (“pebbly”?) from the (rare) adjective suffix -i derived from primitive ✶-īya, -ēya (VT42/10-11).