[Aiwendil]

I realize this discussion seems to be turning into the old beating of that proverbial dead horse; but I'd rather carry on the discussion too long than cut it off too soon and miss a possible resolution. So:

Man-of-the-Wold wrote:

This Project in many ways needs to do what JRRT and CRT were either unable or unwilling to do, which is take all that there is and put it together as best as possible, and not sweat details that do not create any substantive and irresolvable conflict.

These may indeed be words of wisdom. But we are far beyond the point where we can opt not to sweat details. In the end, I think it will prove good that we have been meticulous.

What is stricken would be material, characters, events and so forth that directly contradict substantive facts to be maintained elsewhere in the RS, or something such as the multitude of Balrogs that plainly clashes or is nonsensical in the overall context of JRRTs published works or his more or less final writings.

I agree; and from this point of view it certaily does look silly to worry so much about a name that only appears a few times. There is a strong intuition that this shouldn't be much of a problem at all, that there should be some trivial solution. But alas - that intuition doesn't tell us what the trivial solution is.

To return to the specific question at hand, I find it a bit rich to suggest that we know everything about Sindarian or how it was used by its speakers.

But clearly we do know some things about Sindarin. If we were confronted with a name that the phonology of which was unlike anything in later Sindarin, we would have very good reason to discard it. Is "Rog" such a name? That's a tricky question. On the one hand, both Christopher Tolkien and a kind of vague intuition tell us that it is an old Gnomish name not suited to Sindarin. On the other hand, it's almost impossible to formulate a phonological justification to back up that intuition; again, how could "Balrog" be valid and "Rog" not be?

But might he have retained the idea of "Noldorin" (in abeyance per CRT) as the Exiles' common tougue before Sindarin, and that even for the Noldor, Quenya was already a rarefied language of lore and special occasion?

The language called "Noldorin" is simply an earlier stage (in external, real world time) of the language called "Sindarin" (and "Gnomish" is likewise the precursor of "Noldorin"). "Noldorin" cannot have been retained in abeyance for it was in fact retained as Sindarin.

Lindil wrote:

Nicknames can often be coarser or jesting names or words that are not used as given names. 'Bull' being an english example or 'Shorty', 'Slim' . Basically things that are desriptive and somewhat uncultured, but stick as monikers. Rog seems a perfect candidate for this.

I think this is a bit of a stretch. We have no other examples of Elves having nicknames that were in coarser or less cultured language. Indeed, we have no examples of Elves having nicknames that would have been unsuitable as real names (aside from the fact that certain epithets were given in memory of deeds) - the only exception is "Felagund", which of course is a different story.

We do need a footnote [or minor textual addtion] if we accept CJRT's authority [and his own editarial decision in the Silm] as overriding our personal opinions and understanding of Rog.

I don't quite follow you here. What do you mean? Maybe it's just me - I was up rather late last night struggling with Hermite polynomials and Legendre's equation . . .

...a nickname, whose exact meaning is lost but possibly meaning 'strong' or even 'demon' indicating a near dibolical level of strength, rare even amongst Noldorin smiths.

It's a nice idea. But unfortunately, in my book it still steps over the line into fan fiction. We've been through this before though, and I'm sure there's little more to be said.

Suffice it to say that I am opposed to making "Rog" a nickname or claiming that his name was lost, or anything of that sort. To me, such a solution seems quite artificial and also insufficient for dealing with the possible problem.

As far as I'm concerned our options are:

1. Leave "Rog".

2. Replace it with some attempted update into later Sindarin. There was, way back, some talk about adding a circumflex and maybe dropping the "g". Jallanite rightly pointed out that this was quite arbitrary and unjustified. But I think I may have been too hasty above when I discounted any possibility of an etymological/phonological solution being found. But don't hold your breath.

3. Drop the name but not the character. This would obviously be very tricky. It might be viable, but it's hard to judge how contrived and lacking the resulting narrative would be.

4. Drop the character. This has major implications for the continuity of the narrative, as Rog plays a critical role in the plot.

Believe me, it is only after looking at these four options and the major difficulties with each that retaining "Rog" begins to sound like a good idea to me.

Lindil, earlier your agreement with the footnote/nickname idea sounded reluctant. What other option for eliminating the name were you thinking of? What do you think of option 3 vs. 4?

I would make an effort to investigate the possibility of 2, but I don't have access to all the linguistic resources. I will see whether there is anything I can find, however.