Lord of.... Moria?

[Mister Underhill]

I'm not sure that I'd go along with the notion that "Moria" is a name which was applied only after the coming of the Balrog. Moria, indeed, is applied very freely throughout the LotR as a synonym for Khazad-dûm, even when relating information about the place which clearly pre-dates the Balrog (e.g., "Moria-silver" for mithril).

I presume this position derives primarily from the line in the Sil ("Greatest of all the mansions of the Dwarves was Khazâd-dûm, the Dwarrowdelf, Hadhodrond in the Elvish tongue, that was afterwards in the days of its darkness called Moria"), which also seems to have some implicit support from Gimli's line in "The Ring Goes South" ("...under them lies Khazad-dûm, the Dwarrowdelf, that is now called the Black Pit, Moria in the Elvish tongue").

But I think the Sil line must give way to the greater authority of the LotR. The notes in Appendix F strongly imply that the name was given with, I daresay, characteristic Elvish contempt that had nothing to do with the Balrog:

"But Moria is an Elvish name, and given without love; for the Eldar, though they might at need, in their bitter wars with the Dark Power and his servants, contrive fortresses underground, were not dwellers in such places of choice. They were lovers of the green earth and the lights of heaven; and Moria in their tongue means the Black Chasm. But the Dwarves themselves, and this name at least was never kept secret, called it Khazad-dûm, the Mansion of the Khazâd..."

Gimli's line may be read in the spirit of "now widely known as the Black Pit, Moria...", or even, "now called, even by the dwarves, the Black Pit, Moria..."

My (admittedly cursory) reading of the notes on "Hadhodrond" in HoME XI is that that name was a "straight" translation of Khazad-dûm applied by the Elves when that place was known to them only at second-hand, and that "Moria" was what they named it when they came and saw it for themselves (but presumably before their fast friendship with the Dwarves of that place blossomed). The inscription on the door might even be a winking nod to the bumpy origins of that friendship.