Good points, all. I certainly do agree that Amon Ereb seems likely to have been associated with the Lonely Mountain in some general way, as many features of Beleriand were with
The Hobbit's geography. (I
have read Rateliff's History of the Hobbit and was quite struck by the correspondences and particularly by the reference to Beren and Luthien). My point here was just that Tolkien didn't
really, seriously, consider
The Hobbit part of the Elvish Legendarium when it was begun (although, for all its bourgeois clocks and tea-kettles, he
did decide later that it was).
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Well, Moria only came into being with the Lord of the Rings, at least in any sense equating it with an ancient mansion of Durin's Folk. In The Hobbit itself the "Mines of Moria" is a reference-less and locationless name, merely the place Thror was slain (and which could easily be a goblin-mine). The earliest writing which says more is the 'third phase' continuation of Many Meetings, where Gloin states "Moria was the ancestral home of the Dwarves of the race of Durin." But of course the race of Durin is the Longbeards, and every text up to that time (and even some post-LR!) places their 'ancestral home' in the Blue Mountains.
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Yes, it's certainly true that Moria didn't really exist until
The Lord of the Rings. Consequently, as you point out, the ancestral home of the Longbeards was not associated with the Misty Mountains until that time (except perhaps indirectly, if as you suggest we assume a stage when the Blue Mountains = the Misty Mountains and ancestral home of the Longbeards = Blue Mountains).
The question I was considering was whether this is true:
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Originally Posted by WCH
Moreover, I suggest, this conception still informed his earliest writing in The Lord of the Rings
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My argument was just that, even if the Misty Mountains were intended to be the Blue Mountains at one time, we have no particular evidence that this was still the case by the time LotR was begun in earnest. It may be that, at some time prior to the early work on LotR, Tolkien had decided that the Misty Mountains were a distinct range east of the Blue Mountains; then either in the 'third phase' or earlier he decided that the home of the Longbeards was not Nogrod but instead was in the Misty Mountains. Or he decided that Nogrod, while still the home of the Longbeards, was actually in the Misty Mountains.
The Etymologies may indeed suggest (though very indirectly) that Nogrod was still the Longbeards' home at the time LotR was begun. However, we have no indication that the Longbeards' home was associated with the Misty Mountains at this time (not until the third phase, as you point out), so this doesn't establish the identity of the two ranges.
I don't remember the 'later note' you mentioned in which Nogrod is identified with Moria and placed in the Misty Mountains (it's been too long since I've read HoMe VI-IX). Where exactly is it found? In any case, this blows a big hole in my first idea - that Tolkien decided to make Nogrod distinct from the Longbeards' home at the time of the 'third phase'. However, my second suggestion is still intact - that the two mountain ranges were already distinct by the beginning of LotR and that he decided in the 'third phase' to place Nogrod in the Misty Mountains rather than the Blue.
This really is a trifling point though. On the whole, I think your idea is a good one and my only quibble is with the point at which the two mountain ranges were made distinct.
The association of the Longbeards with Belegost in AAm and GA is indeed strange, and I think you may be onto something when you suggest that he was trying to distinguish the good Longbeards/Belegostians from the not so good folk of Nogrod. Your Firebeards-Belegost, Broadbeams-Nogrod idea is also interesting; but is there any evidence for ‘en-’ meaning fire (my Sindarin is rusty, but I can’t think of any suitable root)? I had always leaned toward Broadbeams-Belegost and Firebeards-Nogrod based solely on the order in which they are named matching the usual formula ‘Nogrod and Belegost’, but that is scant evidence indeed.