# "Morgoth" is a Sindarin name, but how did Feanor know how to speak Sindarin?



## Link (Aug 29, 2003)

Eh?



Morgoth is Sindarin for "Black Enemy".



Yet, Feanor names Melkor (which is a Quenya name) "Morgoth" when he rapes the Silmarils.



How did Feanor know Sindarin?



(This info is from a Counter-Strike player called [WOA]Hellraiser)


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## Confusticated (Aug 30, 2003)

In a footnote to a passage in The Later Quenta Silmarillion in HoME X, where it says Feanor named Melkor the Black Foe of the World, Tolkien says that the ancient form Feanor used was Moringotho, and CT metnions another note where he wrote the ancient form of Morgoth was Moringotto.

Matter of translation, I guess. Names known to us later in the beleriand tales by their Sindarin forms are given in their Sindarin forms even in direct quotation in the Valinor chapters. Feanor calls himself 'Feanor' for example, which was a Beleriand name (cross between his Quenya name Feanaro and the Sindarin form Faenor)... in reality he must have spoken 'Feanaro' when still in Valinor.


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## Lantarion (Aug 30, 2003)

Wow, I hadn't known that.. Thanks Nóm.


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## Maerbenn (Aug 30, 2003)

From HoMe XII: _The Peoples of Middle-earth_; 'The Shibboleth of Fëanor':


> He [Fëanor] himself perished too early in the war against Morgoth, largely because of his recklessness, to do more than note the differences between the dialects of North Sindarin (which was the only one he had time to learn) and the Western.


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## Sangahyando (Oct 31, 2005)

Perhaps Feanor learnt to speak a form of Telerin not wholly different from Sindarin in Kopas?

Sangahyando, great-grandson of Castamir the Usurper


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## Lhunithiliel (Nov 1, 2005)

In the *"Commentary on the Link between The Cottage of Lost Play and The Music of the Ainur"* in the Book of Lost Tales - I, there is a lot said about the languages of the Elves.

The interesting , IMO, point there, which could be seen as relevant to the presen question, is that :



> Gnomish is Sindarin, in the sense that Gnomish is the actual language that ultimately, as the whole conception evolved, became that of the Grey-elves of Beleriand.



And the _Gnomes_ were the otherwise known _Noldoli_ (BoLT-I) = _Noldor_ (The published Silmarillion).
And Feanor was of the clan of the Noldor.


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