Re: CHAT: weird names, was Re: conlanging,the ultimate feminist subversion

At 22:55 -0300 3.8.1999, FFlores wrote:

>Quenya has gender? Never heard of that before... (Not a Tolkien-lang buff,
>but interested!).
Not in the sense that Spanish or German has, but rather you can attach an
ending to indicate the sex of a referent: -o  for a male being, and -e for
a female being, e.g. _mela_ "friend" is epicene, while _melo_ amd _mele_
show what gender the friend is.  There are however quite a lot of ordinary
nouns in -e, and a few ordinary nouns in -o, and even some male names in
-e.  Also words in -mo seem to be gender-neutral agent/possessor nouns,
while -me words are abstract nouns and -ma words are concrete nouns or
adjectives, e.g. _lambengolme_ "philology" _lambengolmo_ "philologist";
_tengwe_ "sign, token", _tengwa_ "letter, written character" (the -m- of
these endings changes to -w- after dental and velar stops, and optionally
after /r/ and /l/.  Some older words change even more drastically, as the
pair _lambe_ "language", _lamba_ "(physical) tongue" < *labmee and *labmaa.

Anyhow these -e and -o endings are very handy to form names from adjectives
in -a!  I have no idea how you gender-distinguish a noun in -o, but to
judge from Sindarin you can suffix the nouns _nis_ "woman" and _neer_ "man"
-- the latter probably shortened to _ner_, e.g. _Noldonis_, _Noldoner_.
You can also form feminine designations by suffixing _yelde_ "girl" in the
form -iel, but it seems you can't do the same with _yondo_ "son": -ion
means "son of" or "descendant of".


 B.Philip Jonsson  <bpj@...> <melroch@...>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~__
            Anant' avanaute quettalmar!               \ \
   __  ____ ____    _____________  ___ __   __ __     / /
   \ \/___ \\__ \  /___  _____/\ \\__ \\ \  \ \\ \   / /
   / /   / /  /  \    / /Melroch\ \_/ // /  / // /  / /
  / /___/ /_ / /\ \  / /Melarocco\_  // /__/ // /__/ /
 /_________//_/  \_\/ /Eowine__   / / \___/\_\\___/\_\
I neer Pityancalimeo\ \_____/ /ar/ /_atar Mercasso naan
~~~~~~~~~Cuinondil~~~\_______/~~~\__/~~~Noolendur~~~~~~
|| Lenda lenda pellalenda pellatellenda cuivie aiya! ||
"A coincidence, as we say in Middle-Earth" (JRR Tolkien)