Middle-earth names

Balrog names should smolder. These suit Middle-earth's terrors of shadow and flame, dredged up from the deep places of the world.

Beorning skin-changers wear old northern names like these, sturdy as oak beams and carrying a faint smell of honey and bear.

Woodmen and beornings share the eaves of Mirkwood, so these names keep that plain northern speech with something wilder underneath.

Bree-folk live where the road meets the hedge. Homely village names like these suit innkeepers, gatewards and gossips of Middle-earth.

Dale lies in the Lonely Mountain's shadow, and its honest, Norse-flavored names suit merchants, bowmen and bell-makers alike.

Deep drumbeat syllables shape these Druedain names from Middle-earth, fit for the wild watchers whom even kings learned not to cross.

Rough and weathered as the moors of Dunland, these hill folk names suit Middle-earth's Dunlendings, a people with long memories.

Stern and proud, these Easterling names fit Middle-earth's peoples of the far east, who marched west under banners of their own.

Elven names with a Middle-earth lilt, flowing and faintly sad, as if each one remembers a shore on the far side of the sea.

Sun-scorched southern names in the spirit of Middle-earth's far kingdoms, fit for serpent banners, war oliphaunts and proud desert lords.

Comfortable Shire-style names with an old-fashioned country lilt, equally suited to respectable gentlehobbits and burglars in denial.

Maiar walked Middle-earth as wizards, spirits and worse, and these luminous, hymn-like names hold that weight of song made flesh.

Snarled, guttural orc names in the Middle-earth tradition, rough enough to be barked across a battlefield without losing their menace.

High-elven names drawn from Quenya roots, each with the stately, vowel-laden music of Tolkien's elder tongue.

Old English in spirit, these horse lord names carry the sound of Rohan, all hard vowels, mead halls and wind over grass.

Sindarin elf names woven from Tolkien-style roots, gray-elven sounds and meanings for characters who belong in Middle-earth.