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Felagund
Rohan
Feb 27 2022, 2:41pm
Post #1 of 9
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'S' is for Sauron
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As Gimli once incorrectly remarked, whilst picking amongst the remains of the fallen Orcs who had assailed the Fellowship at Parth Galen. Gimli was trying to identify the allegiance of these Orcs and upon seeing the ‘S’ rune on a helm, he leapt to the conclusion, not unreasonably, that this was the livery of Mordor and its lord. As it turned out, ‘S’ was in fact for ‘Saruman’. I quote the relevant passage below, from ‘The departure of Boromir’ (LotR):
… on the front of their [four slain Orcs’] iron helms was set an S-rune, wrought of some white metal.
“I have not seen these tokens before,” said Aragorn. “What do they mean?”
“S is for Sauron”, said Gimli. “That is easy to read.”
“Nay!” said Legolas. “Sauron does not use the Elf-runes.”
“Neither does he use his right name, nor permit it to be spelt or spoken”, said Aragorn.
In the wake of decades of additional published material, this significant revelatory passage has caused me to wonder, from time to time, the following: why would the demiurgic being we know as Sauron regard this as “his right name”? This Quenya name, after all, translates as ‘The Abhorred’, and appears to have been a name given to our villain, in fear and loathing, by Elves of the First Age. In Tolkien’s narrative, Sauron called himself, or was called by others, many names over the millennia of his time in Arda but this is the name that ‘stuck’. And so, by the time of the events of LotR, we have a villain who is content to go by the name of ‘The Abhorred’.
On one level, it’s not necessarily reasonable to review this passage through the lens of what we know of the wider legendarium, post the publication of LotR. The revelation of Sauron’s earliest known, pre-‘fall to evil’ name, ‘Mairon’ after all didn’t emerge into the public domain until many decades later, arguably confounding the issue of what is “his right name?”. And similarly, the etymology of ‘Sauron’, would remain in the shadows (no pun intended!) for several years, even taking into account that Tolkien elaborated on this in 1967, in his letter to a Mr Rang in 1967 (Letter 297). Nonetheless, it remains a curious passage, even if we were to ‘quarantine’ it to just LotR. Aragorn’s proclamation that Sauron didn’t “permit it [Sauron’s name] to be spelt or spoken” clashes with the internal narrative already established in the book. At the Council of Elrond, we learned, through the reported speech of Glóin, that Sauron’s emissary to Erebor describes his master as “Lord Sauron the Great”. And later, the Mouth of Sauron announces himself literally as ‘the Mouth of Sauron’ and, as above, uses the phrase “Sauron the Great”. From a feigned historiographical perspective, perhaps the authors of the Red Book of Westmarch simply filled in / transliterated the name ‘Sauron’, for the benefit of an audience of Free Peoples who were more likely to recognise this name. At any rate, Aragorn’s statement doesn’t sit particularly comfortably, in my reckoning, with these other passages. Perhaps even Isildur’s Heir could be wrong, on occasion?
Now fully giving into the temptation to remove this passage from the strictures of ‘quarantine’…! In my case, I began my Middle-earth experience with LotR, and must admit it took me a few years to get into the philological layers of that book, let alone the various posthumous publications. So, as a younger reader, I wasn’t scratching my head, asking why the main ‘baddie’ was okay with such an unflattering name! Looking at Tolkien’s linguistic works dating to before LotR, it strikes me that he was, unsurprisingly, very conscious of what he was doing with this particular name (amongst others), and its fundamentally unpleasant meaning. CJRT’s explanatory note for ‘The Etymologies’, as published in HoMe V, makes it clear enough that such material was frequently revisited by Tolkien. But even taking that into account, the linguistic journey from ‘Thû’ to ‘Sauron’ and what these names meant appears to be well under way, if not complete by the time LotR was published – insofar as ‘complete’ is such a thing with Tolkien’s works!
It’s one thing to be called nasty things by your enemies but quite another to actually officially adopt such a name as your own. As a character developed and operating within an internal universe, what else do we know about Sauronic nomenclature, particularly in the context of names he gave to himself? In the case of ‘Sauron’, perhaps it was the case that he revelled in the notoriety of this name given to him by others in fear, and decided to just ‘own it’. Or perhaps he didn’t care? Or perhaps names, in the context of this particular fictional tyrant, were just clothes or tools that could be taken up and put down again, depending on their usefulness? Certainly, we see the latter in operation as Sauron attempts to circulate amongst the Noldorin realms of the Second Age, as ‘Annatar’ and ‘Aulendil’ – names he himself has crafted, with the specific purpose of not being identified as Sauron, and for ingratiating himself with his target audience. Other, far less subtle self-ascribed names, or rather titles, are provided for in The Silmarillion and Letter 131, such as ‘Lord of the Earth’, ‘Lord of the World’, ‘King of Kings’, and ‘King of Men’. And then we have the no less subtle ‘Tar-mairon’ (“King Excellent”), as per Parma Eldalamberon 17, which neatly riffs on Sauron’s aforementioned earliest known, ‘angelic’ name. All of the above are Second Age constructs, and suggest that Sauron, at least until the destruction of Númenor (and the physical form he wore at the time), may not have regularly gone by the name ‘Sauron’, regardless of what his enemies may have called him.
Broadening things out further, there’s some ‘compare & contrast’ to be had with Tolkien’s narration of the nomenclature for the original Dark Lord, to whom Sauron was but the lieutenant. ‘Morgoth’ was a construct invented and applied by Fëanor to Melkor, and so he became most commonly referenced throughout subsequent narration. Yet when referring to himself, it’s a different story. For example, in his conversation with Húrin after the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, he goes by ‘Melkor’, implicitly rejecting Húrin’s characterisation of him as ‘Morgoth’. This is apparent in both the ‘short form’ of this scene in The Silmarillion and in the longer one published in The Children of Húrin. Moreover, Sauron refers also to his old master as ‘Melkor’, when he’s seeking to introduce the worship of ‘the Lord of Darkness’ to Ar-Pharazôn. I suspect there are passages to be found where the line between ‘Melkor’ and ‘Morgoth’ blur. But in the examples above, it’s possible to conclude that Melkor didn’t accept or see as useful a name that translates as the explicitly negative “Dark Enemy of the World”. And, in Sauron’s case, trying to introduce a new religion devoted to a being called ‘Morgoth’ as opposed to ‘Melkor’, surely would have been an unnecessarily tough sell! Credit to Sauron’s pragmatism there, at least!
So, where does all of this leave us? Given that I’ve not got anywhere near a full word search, my conclusions are inevitably going to be loose. I will posit though that Tolkien’s nomenclature for Mairon-Sauron and Melkor-Morgoth differed. To the point that the former can be interpreted as a character who has internalised a name given to him that was far from flattering; and that the latter rejected an equally unflattering name, and by extension any delegitimisation of his claims to the overlordship of Arda. A Sauronic equivalent to the Melkor’s ‘approach’ was Sauron’s usage of Tar-mairon in the Second Age, both in terms of the claims being advanced and in terms of the primal nature of the name in question. Yet, by the Third Age, ‘Sauron’ is the self-titled norm, or at least by the time of the War of the Ring. I’ve yet to find anything to suggest Tolkien gave the issues I’ve flagged for discussion much thought, beyond the philological elements, but if other TORn Readers can steer me towards something, I’d be very grateful!
Welcome to the Mordorfone network, where we put the 'hai' back into Uruk
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uncle Iorlas
Rohan
Feb 27 2022, 2:55pm
Post #2 of 9
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One of those insights that seems glaring as soon as somebody else points it out. I'm afraid I have no better answer than that the dear professor, however august his Oxford veneer, was a bit feckless about story details sometimes and pretty much made it up as he went along. There's just so much of it, some details were certain to get lost in the shuffle—and anyway, often his shot-from-the-hip flourishes are more satisfying than his later standardizations.
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Voronwë_the_Faithful
Valinor
Feb 27 2022, 3:24pm
Post #3 of 9
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I have little to add to this excellent piece of inquiry and speculation
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The one thing that I wanted to mention is that as I was reading about your comments about Sauron/Mairon I immediately flashed onto the conversation of Hurin and Morgoth/Melkor. And sure enough you made exactly that comparison.
I would say that it is simply an error on Tolkien's part. Even the greatest make some, and in a creation as complex and immense as Tolkien's legendarium, there are bound to be some inconsistencies that cannot really be explained away. It is remarkable, indeed, that there are not more of them.
'But very bright were the stars upon the margin of the world, when at times the clouds about the West were drawn aside.'
The Hall of Fire
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skyofcoffeebeans
Rohan
Feb 27 2022, 4:37pm
Post #4 of 9
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that there is a mistake. It only becomes one if we assume that Aragorn is omnipotent. Sauron had been rising in the years leading up to the story, and it’s certainly possible that Aragorn was operating on calculations that were out of date, I.e. perhaps Sauron had brown bold and changed tactics by the time he sent his emissary to Erebor. Aragorn would have had decades of experience that may no longer be accurate, and the only mistake he needs to make is to not recall this moment from half a year ago or so.
Having made that argument, outside the scope of the work, it does appear that this is a mistake on the author’s part.
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Eldy
Tol Eressea
Feb 27 2022, 8:44pm
Post #5 of 9
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Thank you for this very thorough look at the question!  I'm afraid I don't have much to add, as my own prior (much less comprehensive) thoughts on the matter have never yielded any great insights. I assume Mairon was a relatively late creation, perhaps devised during the composition of WPP but at the very least post-dating the 1940s, since it doesn't appear in The Drowning of Anadûnê. In the earlier version of that text, DA I, we're told that "this evil thing was called by many names, but the Eruhil named him Sauron, and men of Middle-earth (when they dared to speak his name at all) named him mostly Zigûr* the Great." In DA II, this is revised to, "this evil thing was called by many names; but its own name that it took in the arising of its power was Zigûr, Zigûr the Great" (HoMe IX, pp. 345, 363).
This is, of course, reminiscent of the scenario described in "Words, Phrases and Passages" (written in the late 1950s and 1960s), where, as you mention, Sauron called himself Tar-Mairon while ruling as a King of Men in Middle-earth prior to his captivity in Númenor (PE 17, p. 183). Though in both cases, one imagines there must be in-universe translation by scribes going on. Mairon can not have been Sauron's original name in that form, since Quenya did not yet exist, and so it's probably a translation from Valarin. And Adûnaic was not widely spoken in Middle-earth when Sauron began to gain power, nor do I think he'd want to use the language of one of his main rivals, so I imagine Zigûr being a translation from whatever language the NCP/DoA version of Sauron spoke in the mid Second Age. Perhaps there was a Black Speech version of whichever name one prefers to imagine (I'm partial to the theory that Black Speech was based on Valarin).
If I were trying to reconcile the existence of Mairon solely to Aragorn's statement, I might imagine that him calling Sauron "his right name" is an insult, suggesting it's the only name that fits someone so monstrous, and the reason Sauron doesn't let his servants spell or speak it is precisely because it's so insulting. But this doesn't square with the Mouth of Sauron's speech, nor the message to King Dáin. I suppose it's possible Sauron was so horrified by the physical form he was stuck in after the Downfall that using the name "the Admirable" felt like a bad joke, but this feels like a stretch to me even by the standards of this kind of hypothesizing. I'm inclined to agree with Iorlas and Voronwë that this is simply an inconsistency Tolkien overlooked—or one he noticed but for which he never found a solution he liked, since he'd devised the idea of Sauron having a different preferred name while he was working on LOTR, but didn't include it in the finished book.
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* Tolkien wrote the name with a macron over the U in DA I, switching to a circumflex in DA II, but Gossamer Forum seems to hate macrons even more than other diacritics, so I've used the circumflex in both instances.
(This post was edited by Eldy on Feb 27 2022, 8:50pm)
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InTheChair
Rohan
Feb 27 2022, 8:51pm
Post #6 of 9
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I don't know if to characterize it as a mistake,
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but it's true that the way he writes about Morgorth and About Sauron does not match up
Gimlis mistake could perhaps be accepted, if we assume he either did not know Sindarin, or didn't reflect over the meaning of the name
Aragorn says, he does not use his right name, nor permit it to be spelt or spoken. It's unclear if Aragorn means that this is the only name he deserves to be mentioned by, and therefore it's his right name, but either way it does not match up with his messengers in other parts of the story clearly using the name.
One possible explanation is that these are the stories written by the Hobbits, who took their sources from the Elves and from Aragorn, and so report it as them saying Saruon, though the really used a different name?
Which then in its turn does not match up with the legends in the Silmarillion and that conversation with Hurin and Morgoth. Who wrote that for us?
There are a couple of strange translation issues like that in the books. Tolkien himself mentions one in his letters. The use of the Norse names Balin and Fundin on the transcription of the Khuzdul inscription on the Tomb of Balin.
Other may include
S for Sauron (and possibly S for Saruman?) as you've brought up
G (rune) for Grand! (or even G (rune) for Gandalf)
G (rune) for Garden (in the hobbit tongue) (G for Galadriel makes sense though)
Then there's some differences in how other enemies are named.
There's Gothmog a Lieutenant of Morgul, but that's an Elvish name
Then there's Khamûl the Black Easterling which is of unknown language? (Is it?) (Although this name does not appear in the book)
I think there may be even more of that stuff if one starts looking into the Hobbit as well.
What language is Tom Bombadil?
(This post was edited by InTheChair on Feb 27 2022, 8:56pm)
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squire
Half-elven
Feb 27 2022, 10:15pm
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Like most of the commenters on your excellent post, I long since wrote this puzzle off as, basically, a witticism on Tolkien's part about how both his villains end up with names beginning with 'S'. Thus this scene with Gimli and Aragorn is purely to introduce for the reader the idea, horrifying to Aragorn and so to us, that Saruman has gone so far as ally his forces with those of the Dark Lord.
Once the mild gag is over, Tolkien drops it and moves on, blissfully ignoring Aragorn's dictum everywhere else in the story.
The producers of the Ralph Bakshi film of Fellowship and the first half of Two Towers had another solution to the confusing names, of course!
By the way, later in the story we see that the Mordor orcs and Morgul orcs use ideograms, not letters, on their helmets and gear: a Death's-head Man-in-the-Moon for the Morgul soldiers, and the Red Eye for the Mordor orcs. This makes sense, of course, following medieval forms and the basic idea that until modern times most common soldiers were illiterate. By this standard, one would have expected the Isengard orcs to have the White Hand on their helmets, not the 'S'-rune! But Tolkien had to have his little philological joke...
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Hamfast Gamgee
Tol Eressea
Mar 4 2022, 9:36am
Post #8 of 9
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In the Hobbit, Smaug begins with an S as well!
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But not Morgoth in the Silmarillion. And some of his chief Orcs don't start with s I suppose.
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Felagund
Rohan
Mar 19 2022, 12:25am
Post #9 of 9
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the iconography of Isengard war gear
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Many thanks for the reply, squire! I'd forgotten about the mutation to 'Aruman' in the Bakshi film. Just imagine if Bakshi had gone for 'Auron' instead...?
Your mention of ideograms sent me searching through two of my favourite chapters of LotR, 'The Riders of Rohan' and 'The Uruk-hai', which feature the very same Orcs who had been (mis)identified by Gimli only hours before. Therein, there are no explicit references to the 'S' rune - the philological joke, as you nicely put it, has been spent and there's no need for it again. Instead, what we get to help differentiate the Isengard Orcs from their Mordor and Northern counterparts is the term 'white badge', eg.:
"filthy white badges..." [Grishnákh of Mordor expressing how he really feels about the livery of Isengard]
"Upon a stake in the middle was set a great goblin head; upon its shattered helm the white badge could still be seen." [possibly the grisly remains of the Isengard warband's leader, Uglúk]
Of course, 'white badge' (filthy or otherwise) could refer to an inscribed 'S' rune, "wrought of some white metal", to complete the original reference in 'The Departure of Boromir'. And the reference to helms could be interpreted as a common denominator. The earliest reference to the 'White Hand' ideogram of Saruman, also featuring in 'The Departure of Boromir' is specific to shields:
"Upon their [the Isengard Orcs'] shields they bore a strange device:a small white hand in the centre of a black field..."
However, just to keep us on our toes, we later get this, from the 'Helm's Deep' chapter:
"The lightning flashed, and blazoned upon every helm and shield the ghastly hand of Isengard was seen."
So, it seems that in 'The Departure of Boromir' we get a narrative device to momentarily bamboozle the reader, as well as Aragorn & Co., and with a bit of wordplay thrown in for kicks. And thereafter, an Isengarder can be sufficiently identified by the somewhat vague 'white badge' or the more precise White Hand motif. That, at least, spared the defenders of Helm's Deep from the horror of 10,000 copies of the letter 'S' advancing on them. Small mercies :)
Welcome to the Mordorfone network, where we put the 'hai' back into Uruk
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