5 replies to this topic

[av_nefardec]

Many of you may know in the movies Arwen is given a sword that, according to the movies, was held by Elrond, which was held by his father Eärendil, which was held by his mother Idril at the fall of Gondolin.

This is a neat little background story they made up for the sword, and besides the fact that it's curved, it's really nice-looking.

It's called Hadhafang.

Well anyways, I thought this entire thing was completely made up, even the name.

But I was looking through the Etymologies in HoME V recently and under the root SYAD, I found a Quenya derivative "Sangahyando" which is equated with the very sindarin looking "Hadhafang" the name of the sword in the movie. It is sead to mean "throng-cleaver", which is also what the movie has it mean.


Now my question is - was Hadhafang mentioned anywhere else in Tolkien's mythology?

[Frumpus]

OK, now this is REALLY wierd. I was "Google-ing" tonight on a different topic and came across a website that sells the movie-related collectibles. This was, of course, one of the collectibles to-- ehm, ... collect. It had the name, and lineage... and I was thinking the exact same thing: "How did they "think" up this idea?" and "Is this 'really' from his writings?"



(It's details like this that make me more forgiving of the heinous script changes.)

[Sukkit]

Is "Hadhafang" given as a Noldorin equivalent in the Etymologies? Because Quenya hy- becomes h- in Sindarin.

[Sukkit]

I should be publicly caned for that one. Ugh.

How could I forget that the order in compounds is different in Quenya and Sindarin? darn.

PS: in my defence, and after checking the Etymologies, it seems it's not a 'normal' compound anyway, as th becomes v, f by assimilation. But that's a poor excuse for me

[av_nefardec]

lol, no harm done

But I'm still curious as to the usage of this name in Tolkien's works.

In any case, it's got to be one of the best names for a sword in the movies I'm sure it had to be the work of David Salo.

[Sukkit]

Definitely, if it wasn't Salo himself some other nerd did it

As far as I know, Hadhafang is not used elsewhere. It's not in the Lost Road name index, and since this book contains most of the texts written at the same time as the Etymologies (that got many additions dealing with new names coined during the writing of the Lost Road's texts), I'd say this sword-name probably never found out which sword it was.