# How did Sauron call himself?



## M157 (Dec 13, 2010)

I thought about this question a couple of weeks now, so I decided to ask you:

How did Sauron call himself in the Third Age?

In the LotR the Mouth of Sauron calls himself "the Mouth of Sauron". But Sauron means _the Abhorred_ or _the Abomination_, so I doubt that Sauron called himself Sauron. But how did he call himself in the Third Age? Annatar (Lord of Gifts)? Mairon, his original name? Maybe Artano (High-smith)?

What do you think?


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## Helm (Dec 13, 2010)

I don't know what Sauron called himself, but I'm pretty sure he didn't call himself Sauron. At least he did not permit his name to be spoken...


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## Alcuin (Dec 13, 2010)

Grishnákh of Mordor called Sauron the “Great Eye”. Gorbag in his speech with Shagrat just called him “the Eye”. This might have been how Sauron preferred the orcs to refer to him.

The Mouth of Sauron called him “Sauron the Great”. Since _Sauron_ is Sindarin for “abominable” or “abhorrent”, perhaps the Mouth of Sauron used “Sauron” in much the same way that the Dwarves used “Moria”, which means “black pit”, for Khazad-dûm: it was so commonly used by everyone else that it began to lose some of its objection. (“Capitalism” and “capitalist” are derogatory Marxist terms, for instance.)

Aragorn said that Sauron did not permit his “right name” to be used. I suppose that must mean that he did not permit the orcs to call him “Sauron”, but preferred “Great Eye” or some such. 

During the Second Age, Sauron was called “Zigur the Great” by the Men of Middle-earth.. Tolkien interprets _zigur_ as “wizard” in Adûnaic and gives us a declension of the noun. Christopher Tolkien observes in _Sauron Defeated_ that


> Zigur is the name which the men of Middle-earth gave to Sauron; it is not said that it was the name that he took for himself.


But it might be a reasonable guess that the Black Númenóreans continued to call Sauron “Zigur” in the Third Age. 

Gollum referred to him the “Black Hand”. That would be a reasonable thing for Gollum to say since he saw Sauron face-to-face. “Black Hand” is also the name of the underground group sponsored by the Serbian secret service that assassinated the Austrian crown prince Archduke Franz Ferdinand, igniting World War I; a term used for Italian criminal organizations (such as the Mafia); an anti-British Moslem movement in 1930s Palestine; and a Spanish anarchist movement at the end of the nineteenth century. Tolkien would surely have been familiar with all these uses of “Black Hand”. I cannot say that Sauron used this epithet for himself, but it cannot be ruled out, either.


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## Elthir (Dec 13, 2010)

We now have an interesting note written after _The Lord of the Rings _was published: 

'SAWA-, disgusting, foul, vile: [Q saura, foul, vile, whence name Sauron.]* (...)

*this name is also used in late 3[rd] age Sindarin and could be a genuine Sindarin formation from saur; but is probably from Quenya. The ancient Sindarin name for Sauron was Gorthaur, of quite distinct origin (...)'

If I read things correctly, that's pretty interesting, for whether a genuine Sindarin formation, or probably from Quenya, the name was seemingly used in Third Age Sindarin, and the 'ancient' Sindarin name for Sauron was Gorthaur.

Well, even if attested it isn't that easy, as Tolkien changed his mind again and imagined the base here was really THAW- 'detestable' (not SAWA- 'disgusting, foul'). 

However when he re-imagined Q. Sauron as a changed form from older Q. *Thauron(do), I don't remember another explanation of a scenario with respect to the languages of the Third Age.


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## M157 (Dec 14, 2010)

Now I think the most probable solution is, that he kept his Maiar name Mairon, because his master Morgoth kept his "old" name Melkor, too.


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## Starbrow (Dec 14, 2010)

Now I'm imagining Sauron at an evil-doers convention wearing a name tag that says,
"Hello, my name is Great Eye."LOL


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## Alcuin (Dec 14, 2010)

It gives a whole new sense to the expression, “It beats a poke in the Eye with a sharp stick.”


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## Parsifal (Dec 17, 2010)

Wikipedia has more on this than (for example) The Encyclopedia of Arda:

In some of Tolkien's notes, it is said that Sauron's original name was Mairon or "the admirable", "but this was altered after he was suborned by Melkor. But he continued to call himself Mairon the Admirable, or Tar-Mairon "King Excellent", until after the downfall of Númenor.[14]
The name _Sauron_ (from an earlier form _Þauron_) originates from the adjective _saura_ "foul, putrid" in Tolkien's invented language of Quenya, and can be translated as "the Abhorred" or "the Abomination". In Sindarin (another Elf-language created by Tolkien) he is called "Gorthaur", "the Abhorred Dread" or "the Dread Abomination". He is also called the "Nameless Enemy". The Dúnedain (the descendants of Isildur) call him "Sauron the Deceiver" due to his role in the Downfall of Númenor and the forging of the Rings of Power. In the Númenórean (Adûnaic) tongue he was also known as "Zigûr", The Wizard.
His two most common titles, the "Dark Lord of Mordor" and the "Lord of the Rings", appear only a few times in _The Lord of the Rings_. His other titles or variants thereof include "Base Master of Treachery", the "Dark Lord", the "Dark Power", "Lord of Barad-dûr", the "Red Eye", the "Ring-maker", and the "Sorcerer".
In the First Age (as detailed in _The Silmarillion_) he was called the "Lord of Werewolves" of Tol-in-Gaurhoth. In the Second Age he assumed the name Annatar, which means "Lord of Gifts", and Aulendil, meaning "Friend of Aulë", as well as Artano, meaning "High-Smith", with which he assumed a new identity and tricked the Elves into working with him to create the Rings. In the Third Age he was briefly known as the Necromancer of Dol Guldur because his true identity was still unknown.
Russian historian Alexandr Nemirovsky suggests that the name Sauron is meaningful in the Hurrian language. He derives the name from the Hurrian sequence Sau-ra-n(ne), meaning "possessing the weapon" or "armed".[43]


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## Elthir (Dec 17, 2010)

Parsifal said:


> (...) Wikipedia has more on this than (for example) (...) The name _Sauron_ (from an earlier form _Þauron_) originates from the adjective _saura_ "foul, putrid" in Tolkien's invented language of Quenya, and can be translated as "the Abhorred" or "the Abomination".


 
Wikipedia is mixing ideas here however. In the latest idea Thauron- is Quenya but hails from a base THAW- 'detestable' (or 'abhorred' is close enough). As I note above, the base is no longer SAWA- 'foul, putrid' according to the later conception.

The information on _Mairon_ actually hails from the same rejected entry SAWA- (posted in part above), but since the rejection of SAWA- (for Sauron) need not affect the details of Mairon, these are being lifted and 'preserved' in a sense.



Not unheard of for essays or articles concerning Tolkien's history :*D


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## e.Blackstar (Feb 14, 2011)

Alcuin said:


> The Mouth of Sauron called him “Sauron the Great”. Since _Sauron_ is Sindarin for “abominable” or “abhorrent”, perhaps the Mouth of Sauron used “Sauron” in much the same way that the Dwarves used “Moria”, which means “black pit”, for Khazad-dûm: it was so commonly used by everyone else that it began to lose some of its objection. (“Capitalism” and “capitalist” are derogatory Marxist terms, for instance.)


 
I think this hits the nail on the head. Besides, Sauron might not have objected too awfully to the name "abhorrent". He was proud, certainly, but it doesn't seem like he has an illusions about being A Good Guy. He might have even gotten off on knowing that the "lesser beings" considered him so powerful as to be "abominable".


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## Bucky (Feb 15, 2011)

There is a mention, most likely in HoME Volume 10, Morgoth's Ring, 'Myth's Transformed' ~ I'm too tired to look it up though ~ that says 'Sauron claimed to be Morgoth returned in the Third Age'.....

So, he might have used the name Morgoth or Melkor!

of course, this wasn't published by the author himself and might have been discarded in the end.


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