From: Brian M. Scott
Message: 18856
Date: 2003-02-17
> Reading Tolkien to my children, I'm reminded every now andDe Vries, Altnordisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, notes a
> 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).