The Wild, Wild, Wood-elf West

Last year I wondered in an online musing if Tolkien intended the word "silvan" to be an Elvish word. He speaks of the Silvan Elves and Wood-elves interchangeably, and a number of people chuckled warmly and pointed out that "sylvan" means "woodland". Well, yes, I knew that, but that wasn't the point. Tolkien loved playing word games. Take "orthanc". Supposedly this is a Sindarin word which means "forked height". In Anglo-Saxon it means "cunning mind". The Sindarin name for Sauron's realm, Mordor, means "black land", but it's also an Anglo-Saxon word for murder. What a coincidence. "Silvan" occurs many times throughout The Lord of the Rings. Sometimes it's capitalized, sometimes it's not. "Silva" comes from a Latin word for "forest", and maybe that comes from an older IndoEuropean word for "wood". My musings pondered the possibility that "silvan" might be a combination of "sil,thil" and "wan". "Sil" can mean "light" and "wan" has several derivatives, including "vanwa", "gone, departed, vanished, lost, past". So, the name could mean, "lost to the light"; i.e., these Elves never saw the Light of the Two Trees, and stopped seeking it (or never sought it). They were Dark Elves. No one liked that idea. "Silvan" must be the English word. Of course, neither Mordor nor Orthanc must be the English words. Linguists. They just don't speak the same language as the rest of us. The joke is possibly one Tolkien would have enjoyed. (Of course, "silvan" could also mean "shining goose", so it's not really likely this is intended to be an Elven word, unless Thranduil's standard contained a glowing goose.) Of course, the Wood-elves spoke their own language. We don't actually see much of this language in The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien suggests a few names were probably of Silvan origin were "adapted to Sindarin". One word that seems like it might be from the woodland language is "daro", the command that Haldir the March-warden of Lorien speaks to Legolas as the elf prince is about to climb into a tree. But this was just a Sindarin word, according to Tolkien. Perhaps only I appreciate the fact it also happened to be the surname of my fourth-grade homeroom teacher, Mrs. Daro. Mrs. Stop? Hm. The Wood-elves had a name for themselves. It was most likely penni, a variant of "quendi", the Quenya word for Elves (actually, the word meant "speakers, those who speak" -- the Elves named themselves before they met other speaking creatures). In an essay discussing Elvish names for various peoples, Tolkien lists the names of six Avari tribes: kindi, cuind, hwend, windan, kinn-lai, and penni. It has been suggested that because of phonetic shifts, earthquakes, and the proper alignment of the stars, the last name is probably of Lindarin origin. The Lindar were the third group of Elves before the Separation which resulted in the Eldar and the Avari.

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