Reading Tolkien to my children, I'm reminded every now and then of rare Old English words that appear in _The Lord of the Rings_ , sometimes disguised as Quenya words. The name <Eärendil> has a transparent Quenya etymology (eär 'sea' + -ndil 'friend'), but since it also refers to the Evening Star, it was no doubt inspired by OE e:arendel 'Venus' (by Tolkien's own admission, these famous lines from Cynewulf's _Christ_,
Eala earendel engla beorhtast
ofer middangeard monnum sended ...
haunted his imagination since he first read them). This word is in turn connected with ON Aurvandill (= Orvandil, a hero whose toe, thrown into the sky by Thor, became a star; as to which star it was, opinions vary).
I've seen attempts to etymologise these names either together or in separation (so that e.g. the latter is associated with <aurr> 'moist earth, mud', with <vandi> 'task, difficulty', and God knows what else). I think, however, that Pokorny is right in identifying the initial element of <e:arendel> with *h2auso:s 'dawn'. The second element would then be *wand-ila-/-ala- 'something that changes or wanders about' (cf. Ger. Wandel), hence, hypothetically, *'wandering star, planet'. Apparently the original *-s-stem was transformed into a Germanic weak stem *auzo:n- (a well-attested process affecting old *-s- and *-t-stems). In both Old English and Old Norse the weak-stem suffix was regularly syncopated in composition (cf. OE gum-cynn 'mankind', heort-le:as 'heartless'), hence *aur(a)-wandil- with further phonetic simplification of the unstressed component in English (e:arendel < *e:ar-wendel, cf. hla:ford < *hla:f-weard).
Comments welcome,
Piotr