"The Rings of Power" Vanity Fair article

[Huinesoron]

As G55 says, we have the trailer now, and also two followup articles from Vanity Fair:

Teaser Trailer 1 (Superbowl Trailer)
Secrets of 'The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Teaser' Trailer (Vanity Fair)
10 Burning Questions About Amazon’s 'The Rings of Power' (Vanity Fair)

I'll obviously do a trailer response later, but for now I want to poke one specific point:

Names

The show's name-game is... kind of rubbish, actually. Ignoring the canon characters and places, here's what we've got so far:

• Arondir - Silvan elf. Plausible Sindarin (maybe something like Arod+Nir, "Noble Tears"?), but as a Silvan elf he should be using a slightly different form. Even Legolas does this, rather than being pure Sindarin Laegolas.
• Halbrand - Unspecified mortal on a raft. Tolerable Sindarin (Hal+Brand, "Tall and Towering"), which would make him... what, non-Numenorean Edain? It just feels like they've taken Brand (son of Bain son of Bard) and slapped an Edainic (specifically Haladin) prefix onto him.
• Tirharad - Village in "the Southlands". Obvious Sindarin Tir+Harad, "Guard (of the) South", but I don't think Tir- would actually compound like that. Also: why does a mortal village have a Sindarin name?
• Bronwyn - Mortal woman in Tirharad. But her name is Welsh. And not old-fashioned Welsh, which would be a clever way of extending the Old English/Old Norse 'translations'. It's just a modern Welsh name. (And apparently not much used in Wales, because -wyn is usually masculine.)
• Carine - Isildur's sister. If written and pronounced as Carinë [Ka-REE-nay], looks like plausible Quenya (no obvious meaning, but could just be Car+inë, "Maker"). If pronounced as an English speaker would (ca-REEN), it's neither Quenya nor Adunaic, but looks more French.
• Disa - dwarf princess. Okay, I know there's not a lot to work with, but this is literally the only known female dwarf name with an English feminine ending stuck on. (You couldn't find anything in the Eddas?!)
• Elanor "Nori" Brandyfoot - I like her. She's adorable. I look forward to seeing her explore Middle-earth. But ye Valar that's a bad name. She's named for an Elvish flower which I don't think blooms anywhere east of Lindon at this point - certainly nowhere her family would have seen. The flower is yellow, which doesn't have anything to do with her (unlike Elanor Gardner). The name is abbreviated - fine, Hobbits do that - but to a canon (male!) dwarf name. And the surname combines her species name with a river that none of her people have ever seen. It's just... really bad.

I just... languages, and the names that come from them, were kind of Tolkien's whole deal. I would have expected them to put a lot more effort into making things fit properly.

So there we go! Finally, something I unambiguously dislike.

hS