Rohanese

The Rohan language is derived from the language of the Éothéod, who were among the Northmen and was related to other Northmen languages, such as those of Rhovanion, Esgaroth, and Dale.

The Hobbits before their Wandering Days in the Vales of Anduin had contact with that people and their languages had many words in common. For example the Rohirrim had retained the legend of the being known as kûd-dûkan (translated as hol-bytla), a term which became kuduk by the Hobbits, the name they had for themselves.

Many archaic Hobbit names bear similarities to Rohan's, since the ancestors of The Shire hobbits lived on the upper reaches of the Anduin, close to the ancestors of the Rohirrim, and there was apparently a good deal of linguistic cross-fertilisation.

Despite its relation to Westron, the Rohan language was not intelligible to its speakers. Legolas was unable to understand the songs, however he noted that the language is like the land itself: rich and rolling in part, and else hard and stern as the mountains.

Words in the language of Rohan often include the element lô-/loho, which means "horse". Lōgrad means "Rohan" or "Horse-mark". Lohtûr means "Horse-fols" or "Horse-land". The latter shows the element tûr also seen in the name Tûrac "People-king".

The word trahan means "burrow".

J.R.R. Tolkien consistently, with only one exception, used the name Rohan for the name of the language of the Rohirrim in his notes on the Nomenclature of The Lord of the Rings that he made to assist translators in translating the book into other languages, which he had almost completed on 2 January 1967. J.R.R. Tolkien also used the name Rohan for the name of the language of the Rohirrim in a manuscript for an earlier draft version of Appendix F of The Lord of the Rings. Also Christopher Tolkien, in one instance, refers to the language of Rohan as "Rohan".

J.R.R. Tolkien used the adjective Rohanese once in an essay about the names of rivers, which he wrote after 23 June 1969 but it is not clear by the context if the word is the name of a language, or simply an adjective. He used the word Rohanese twice, in the essay about the Eldarin bases related to light and darkness, which was written on Allen & Unwin scrap paper dating from the late 1960s. and once in his Nomenclature of The Lord of the Rings.

J.R.R. tolkien used the term "language of Rohan" in Appendix F of The Lord of the Rings, the term "language of the Rohirrim" in the Prologue and in the chapter The King of the Golden Hall and the term "language of the Mark in the chapter The Road to Isengard.

Robert Foster in The Complete Guide to Middle-earth uses the name Rohirric, which has stuck among the students of Tolkien's languages. Perhaps it was modelled on "Rohirrim" and the ending -ic of "Adûnaic". Christopher Gilson uses "Rohirric" in the List of Abbreviations to "Words, Phrases & Passages in The Lord of the Rings", as well as Helge Fauskanger in Ardalambion.

Lisa Star in Tyalië Tyelelliéva 17 claimed that she saw the name Rohirian written in a small note at the bottom of a draft of The Lord of the Rings appendix on languages in Marquette University.

Tolkien turned names in the Rohan language into modernized Old English names. Even modernized names show a strong Anglo-Saxon influence. Old English was supposed to render an archaic form of Westron, which was supposedly rendered by Modern English. This solution occurred to Tolkien in 1942, when he was searching for an explanation of the Eddaic name of the dwarves already published in The Hobbit.

Some words show the plural ending "-as", as were Old English nouns of the strong-masculine declension.

The Rohirrim used the Germanic patronymic "-ing". They called themselves the Eorlingas, and Beorn's people were the Beornings, Scyld's people were the Scyldingas in Norse and Anglo-Saxon mythology.

Théoden was referred to as "Théoden King", rather than "King Théoden", just as Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon kings had the word "konungr"/"cyning" ("king") added after their names, e.g. Hervarðar konungr, rather than before.

Some Old English names that render Rohirric words include:

• Éothéod: from "eoh" ("war-horse") and "þeod" ("folk", "people", "nation")
• Gríma: possibly from "grima" ("mask", "helmet", "ghost")
• Eorl: from "eorl" ("nobleman")
• Théodred: from "þeod" ("folk", "people", "nation") and "ræd" ("counsel")
• Elfwine: from Ælfwine ("Elf-friend")

Translation

As Westron is rendered in the novels with English, the language of Rohan is translated into Old English. This is because Tolkien tried to reproduce for English readers its archaic flavour in relationship to the Common Speech. Westron is an amalgamated language which, although deriving from Adûnaic, was formed from the languages of the Middle Men, much like the English language with many influences from Celtic and Norman.

However, the relationship between the two pairs of languages is not identical: Old English is the direct ancestor of modern English, but Rohan was not the direct ancestor of Westron, since the latter derives from Adûnaic.

In some cases, Tolkien did not provide genuine Old English words, but rather modernized the forms and spellings of Old English words, because the Hobbits modernized the names that they heard in the language of Rohan if the were made of elements that they recognized or if they were similar to place-names in the Shire. Such names are:

• Éothain instead of eohþeg(e)n
• Firien instead of Firgen in the names Halifirien, Firienfeld and Firienholt
• Elfwine instead of Ælfwine
• Gamling instead of Gameling
• Greyhame instead of greg-hama
• Wormtongue instead of wyrm-tunge
• Woses instead of wasan; also isolated from the English term Woodwoses.
• Dunharrow instead of Dunhaerg
• Entwade, Entwash, Entwood instead of Entwaed, Entwaesc, Entwudu
• Edoras and instead of Eodoras
• Snowbourn instead of snawburna
• Shadowfax instead of Sceadu-fæx
• Stoningland instead of Staning-(land)
• Upbourn instead of Upburnan

The reason for the use of modernized forms of those names by speakers of Westron was that they were said to be intelligible for them; Gondorians were familiar with the place-names of Rohan (like Entwade), while Hobbits recognized some common elements with their dialect.

1. Esta ficha se ha importado inicialmente de TolkienGateway.net el día 29/05/2026.