Valandor

the land of the valar

Valandor place-name "the land of the Valar", confused with and replaced by Valinórë "the people of the Valar", short form Valinor (SA:dôr, Silm)

valandor Archaic

place name. Land of the Valar

An archaic name for Valinórë (SA/dôr, PE17/26), a compound of Vala and the suffix -ndor “land”.

valinórë

place name. Land of the Valar

Land of the Valar within Aman (S/37), a compound of Vali, an archaic plural of Vala, and nórë “land” (SA/val, dôr). It usually appeared in the shorter form Valinor. In older Quenya, this name would have meant “Valian folk”, but it was blended with archaic Valandor to get its current meaning (PE17/20, SA/dôr).

Conceptual Development: The name ᴱQ. Valinor appears in the earliest Lost Tales with essentially the same form and meaning (LT1/70), and its long form Valinōre appeared in the Qenya Lexicon (QL/66). The name ᴹQ. Valinor appeared in Silmarillion drafts from the 1930s (SM/12, 80; LR/110, 205), and in The Etymologies it already had the same derivation as given above (Ety/BAL, NDOR).

In the earlier stages, the name Aman had not yet been invented, so Valinor referred to the entire land of the West, not just the land of the Valar within it.

See ✶Bali(a)nōrē for a discussion of its complex etymology.