: Living. Working. Partying. Not sleeping enough. Got a
: good girlfriend that's lasted a while finally, which
: hasn't helped the latter of the aforementioned three
: much.
Ah, meraviglioso, signore. Devi mi dire della questa dama; per piacere, lasci che possiamo ascoltare come sembra la bella, gli occhi, i capelli, le statistiche, eccetera.
: [bows to one more well-versed in the Elvish languages
: than he]
Ah, but you have the girlfriend to occupy you. I have Elvish, and Hindi, and Gaelic. ... We'll just pretend those are somehow equivalent.
: You got the gist of all the parts, but I think you're a
: bit too smart on the Elvish to get the joke, which
I always was painfully naοve... Sili can attest to that I'm sure. *Grins and waves to Sili.*
: relies quite a bit on my speaking very bad Elvish, and
: some inter-lingual gags on my real name. The 'taure'
: root you got right, forest. The -on is a suffix used
: in some Elvish and Numenorean names to denote a proper
: noun, a name; hence Tauron is simply
: "Forrest" as opposed to "forest".
Oh, duh! that's totally right! There are dozens of Quenya names, Fingon and Turgon among them, which do exactly the same. Right you are. In fact, -on as a name ending is meant as a form of the genative ending, used for names.
Interestingly, my own name, Luke, comes from the Greek Loukas meaning "from Lucania" (a reigion in Italy) So, being Italian (just as yourself) like my namesake, having such a name is appropriate. More than that, the region of Lucania, which has now changed its name to Basilicata, contains an ancient forest, now a national reserve, for it was named after the dense and beautiful woods which once covered its beauteous terrain. The Roman name "Lucania" was derived from the Latin word lucus means a "grove," or "sacred wood." So you can see, appellatively, you and I are not so unalike.
: The second name is where it gets much more complex, and
: also where the pick-up line is. Erufailon as you
: guessed is a translation of my middle name John; I
: intended it to be more "God's Generosity",
That translation is perfectly acceptable, I think (especially since Tolkien didn't provide Quenya with many synonyms).
: though I don't know enough about Quenya to properly
: conjugate (not even sure that's the right term)
I haven't a clue either ... maybe decline?
: the
: Eru and Faila together. God's Generosity was the
: closest translation I could find for "God's
: Gift", which is one of the translations I found
: on the Net for "John".
Oh, I got it! There is a beautiful word for "gift" in Quenya, anna, which is also the name of one of the tengwar (letters). For "God's," we can translate it in a couple ways, with either the genative or the possessive (which, if you can believe it, are different cases in Quenya -- but at least it's not Finnish, which has sixteen cases). As God is no longer in possession of this hypothetical gift, but that it is given from him, the genative is preferred. That would change Eru to Ero, "of God" (cf. Silmarillion plural genative for Silmarilli, and therefore meaning "of the Silmarils," the book about the Starlight-jewels). Also possible could be the ablative form, Erullo, "from God," which has the connotation of movement and action, whereas the genative does not.
Now, as for the arrangement, you could have it either way theoretically (though no one knows for sure how Tolkien imagined proper nouns), as word order in Quenya is liquid and variable, just as in Latin or Greek. Therefore you have the options of Eroanna, Erolloanna, Annaero, Annaerullo. However, "oa" and "ae" combinations in Quenya, especially spanning two words, are very unfriendly. Therefore, I recommend an elided form of the latter two: Annero, Annerullo, both of which retain a clear and decipherable meaning without confusion.
For "to women," in "God's gift to women," only the dative case is possible, which therefore leads inescapably to nissin. I realize the intrinsic italianicity of "Cameranesi" is visually lost in the extra consonants, but unless you want "to Elf-women" (quendirin), that seems about all that's possible.
So, I recommend Tauron Anneronissin, or the equally valid Tauron Annerullonissin.
: The -on in the middle
: is again just a proper noun, indicating that I'm not
: "forest God's gift", but "Forrest
: John".
: I was then moving on to translate my last name,
: Cameranesi, which is a concatonation (according to my
: paternal grandfather) of "de la Camera de
: Finessi", or "of the house of finesse",
: in Italian. In the process of scrolling the Quenya
: corpus wordlist for translations, I stumbled on
: "nissi", and then it struck me... it may not
: be proper Quenya, but if I stuck that on to the end of
: my middle name in Elvish, not only would it sound a
: bit like my real last name (-lonissi, -ranesi), but it
: would mean, roughly, if you kinda squint and turn your
: head the right way (and really don't understand Quenya
: any better than I do), "God's Gift [to]
: Women".
Actually, in Sindarin you could totally get away with that, since that's precisely how most cases, especially the genative, are formed (such as Minas Morgul, "Tower [of] Sorcery," Minas Tirith, "Tower [of] Watch").
: Hence I now go by Tauron Erufailonissi whenever I need an
: Elvish name, and just hope that some day some elf
: chick who understands broken Quenya will get the joke
: and sleep with... I mean, laugh with me.
*Laughs.*
: I don't suppose you might help me clean it up a little
: bit better?
If you like one of the suggestions above, please use it.
: And if you or anyone else is curious, I got started on
: this whole deal with this article of the same name as
: this post: http://www.uib.no/People/hnohf/elfnam.htm
Haha, nice article. Those crazy Scandinavians... anyone ever see Wild Strawberries?
: Which you can find linked to from a site you probably
: already know, the Ardalambion:
: http://www.ardalambion.com/
Implicitly. There's a 200-page course on Quenya there which is very instructive. This Helge guy sure knows his stuff.
(By the way, this forum is horribly slow to load anymore; I can't even post half the time.)
