User talk:Double sharp/Quenya periodic table

1. Hydrogen - from hydro genes = water forming. Water = nén (nen-), form can be translated as make = car-. Too scared to form this word. Neo-Quenya wiki has nendontil.
2. Helium - helios sun. not a metal despite -ium, suggest "sun air". sun = Anar, air = vista (as a substance), thus *anarvista?
3. Lithium - lithos stone. "stone metal". *ondorauta? (prefer this form as more euphonious than tinco for metal here)
4. Beryllium - beryllos "beryl" - translate with elessar?? *elessarrauta?
5. Boron - borax. Ultimate source means "white" = ninquë, lossë. B isn't really a metal: following Chinese, "white stone" (there doesn't appear to be a word for rock?!!? srsly??) *ninquëondo? (I'm pretty sure I've already violated some rule here)
6. Carbon - there does not appear to be a Quenya word for "coal" or "charcoal". Being the main element of organic element, suggest "life matter"? (aaaargh no word for substance!!!!) matter = orma, engwë, life = *coivië? *coiviëorma (I'm pretty sure something should happen to those vowels) (and I'm pretty sure the great Professor is turning in his grave by now)
7. Nitrogen - no word for nitre (not that I expected one). Use French name azote (without life). "without life air"? *úcoiviëvista? (atrocities against Quenya forthcoming)
8. Oxygen - no word for acid, nor sour...aaargh. *throws in towel* Neo-Quenya wiki has maicontil.
9. Fluorine - the one that started it all. *lutuvista???: see Talk:Quenya#Hey!
10. Neon - from neos "new". "New air": *vinyavista?

(decides to spare it from further offenses. stopping now.)

Did you have a look at this discussion at the NeoQuenya Wiki? Anyhow, I've consulted my two dictionaries and grammar books by Pesch and Krege, so this is what I would suggest:

1. Hydrogen - "water-former" would be the gerund of canta- (to form) and nén (water): Néñcantië.
2. Helium - How about Ánaroa, sun-substance/sun-matter (from ánar + hroa)?
3. Lithium - ondorauta sounds and looks good.
4. Beryllium - elessar translates to elvenstone or starstone, so that's not what you're looking for. The etymology of beryl contains a marine element, so I'd go for something like ear (sea) + ondo (stone) + rauta (metal): earondorauta.

   Sorry...I counld't find an exact word so I went the (lol) Bilbo-route :-P Double sharp (talk) 00:22, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

5. Boron - 'Rock' and 'stone' happen to be the same word in Quenya, so that's ninquondo or lossondo. The ending vowel of the first nown gets lost when you combine it with a noun that starts with a vowel.
6. Carbon - Hmm... There's a word for 'embers', yúla, but that refers to the burning state with yú apparently meaning 'red glow'. But one translation for life-substance would be cuilerma with erma being another term for 'substance', 'stuff'.
7. Oxygen - If we ignore the 'sour' parts and get back to the literal meaning of ὀξύς (oxys) i.e. 'sharp' according to our WP article, then I think maicontil would mean something like 'sharp-maker'. But I don't know how they came up with that form.
8. Nitrogen - Here I'd like to point at the German name Stickstoff i.e. is literally the "stuff that smothers (fire)", because molecular nitrogen does just that. So in lack of a better term for 'quenching'/'smothering' I suggest this: quor-, 'to suffocate'; which leaves us with náreqouroa, "the stuff that suffocates fire" (lit. fire-suffocate-stuff).
9. Fluorine - Considering that the Noldor were great smiths, they might have known about the use of flourine in lowering the melting points of metals. So, flourine could be something like úleacáralaroa, (fluid-making-substance).
10. Neon - Yes, 'new air' would be something like vistavinya (air-new) or vinyavista (new-air).

De728631 (talk) 16:59, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Ah, thanks for pointing me to that discussion. But it seems they have not searched very much before giving up on etymologies and translating them... Double sharp (talk) 11:47, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

calcium

You needn't calque everything. For calcium, how about something based on seashells or bone? —Tamfang (talk) 22:46, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

One might even imagine that the Noldor had a better understanding of chemistry and named element 8 'water-maker'. (If we ever meet people who breathe ammonia or methane they'll think it weird that we call element 1 'water-maker'.) —Tamfang (talk) 23:27, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

@Tamfang: Your post made me spend too much time thinking about what kind of understanding the Ñoldor could have gotten to. I don't think it would have been that high, for various reasons:

We only figured out that oxygen was an element in the late 18th century, and it took until the 1830s to figure out that not O but H was the "acid-maker" (and even that wasn't codified until Arrhenius in the late 19th century). Now if you assume the 1 Valian Year = 9.582 Sun Years conversion, I doubt that very much progress would have been made the arrival of the Vanyar and Ñoldor in Valinor in YT 1132, after which they have at least 363(9.582) = 3480 years in Valinor until the Darkening in YT 1495.

However! Since Laws and Customs of the Eldar (from Morgoth's Ring) tells us that Elves marry soon after they are of age (at 50) and had lots of children (at this time). Now, this does not make any sense with the timeline given in the Annals of Aman. The problem is: you should have lots of generations in those 3480 years, but the House of Finwë only has four generations at the time of the Darkening (with Finwë as the first generation, who was around at Cuiviénen), and since Celebrimbor did not swear the oath, I doubt he was of age yet at that time. Thankfully, Tolkien provided a solution:

“ But since Aman was made for the Valar, that they might have peace and delight therein, all those creatures that were thither transplanted or were trained or bred or brought into being for the purpose of inhabitation in Aman were given a speed of growth such that one year of the life natural to their kinds on Earth should in Aman be one Valian Year.

For the Eldar this was a source of joy. For in Aman the world appeared to them as it does to Men on Earth, but without the shadow of death soon to come. Whereas on Earth to them all things in comparison with themselves were fleeting, swift to change and die or pass away, in Aman they endured and did not so soon cheat love with their mortality. On Earth while an elf-child did but grow to be a man or a woman, in some 3000 years, forests would rise and fall, and all the face of the land would change, while birds and flowers innumerable would be born and die in löar upon löar under the wheeling Sun. ”

So that means that they really only have the equivalent of 363 years in Valinor. Even with Aulë teaching them, I'm not sure they would've gotten that far in this time, even with Fëanor around from YT 1169 onwards. Of course, in Middle-earth they still have only 455 years before the Bragollach and another seventeen before the Nírnaeth, which really isn't enough (and Aulë isn't there anymore) – furthermore, given Thingol's ban of Quenya (something I intensely dislike), I think any new scientific words would've been coined in Þindarin, so as not too lose Þindarin allies. In the Second Age Celebrimbor in Eregion would probably have continued the research, and has 947 years, so maybe then he could reach that level of understanding (although it'll have to go differently from the human development, as they couldn't really have had an Industrial Revolution yet: see below). All this would presumably have been lost in the fall of Eregion.

Maybe Þauron would have helped Celebrimbor come to this level of understanding of chemistry?! After all, it's only with the coming of Þauron that the Industrial Revolution in Númenor appears to bear its first fruits: "ships that go without the wind, made of metal that sheareth rocks, and they sink not in calm or storm...darts like thunder that pass over leagues unerring", which is deeply weird given that they had 3230 years in Númenor before Þauron was brought there by Ar-Pharazôn and yet the Great Armament still uses ships with sails rowed by slaves!

So, I think most of these element names are going to perhaps be Mannish-made compounds made in Arnor and Gondor in the Fourth Age, where Quenya would still be remembered. (There probably would be words for them also in Valinor; maybe some reached Middle-earth with Glorfindel and the Istari?)

Maybe I ought to go not by atomic number, but by approximate discovery period. The attested Quenya element names are Cu urus (earlier tambë, as in your username); Pb canu; Au malta; Ag t(y)elpë; Fe anga, ere(n) (the latter also meaning "steel"); Sn latúcen. The names for Pb and Sn date all the way back to The Book of Lost Tales, as does tambë for Cu, so YMMV on those. These are all ancient elements. C, S, Hg, Zn, As, Sb, and Cr are missing: given the usual use of C as charcoal, Fauskanger's derivation *s-yul-mā > *hyulma (from YUL "smoulder") seems adequate enough for both. Since Greek θειον may be related to Latin fumus and have originally meant "fumigation substance", *holon (is that how it works?) "stinking one" should do for S. On the same vein, since ὑδράργυρος "water-silver" was enough to characterize Hg, perhaps *sírimon "liquid one" would do? (Most of the modern names don't stress that it is a metal, and even the Chinese character lacks the "metal" radical, so I think we're fine.)

Zn, As, Sb, and Cr are a little bit harder. For Zn I propose *aicon "sharp one", as it forms sharp crystals. I'm cheating, incidentally: this is from a single gloss of Aicanáro as "Sharp-flame", as maica seems to be more like "piercing" (cf. Maeglin "sharp glance"). Given orpiment's golden colour, perhaps As can be *lauron (from golden-coloured things, but not gold; is that how it works?). Nobody seems to know where "antimony" comes from, but one possibility is ανθήμόνιον "floret", and some related words describe efflorescence: so why not *lohton (intended to be "sprouter")? Finally we can calque Cr as *quilerauta "hue-metal". Well, that's a start, at least! Double sharp (talk) 15:02, 3 March 2015 (UTC)