Balrog - Name

Name

The name "Balrog," but not the meaning, emerges early in Tolkien's work: it appears in the Fall of Gondolin, one of the earliest texts Tolkien wrote (ca. 1918). An early list of names described Balrog as "an Orc-word with no pure Quenya equivalent: 'borrowed Malaroko-' ".

In Gnomish (another of Tolkien's invented languages) Balrog is parsed as balc 'cruel' + graug 'demon', with a Quenya equivalent Malkarauke. Variant forms of the latter include Nalkarauke and Valkarauke.

By the 1940s, when Tolkien began writing The Lord of the Rings, he had come to think of Balrog as Noldorin balch 'cruel' + rhaug 'demon', with a Quenya equivalent Malarauko (from nwalya- 'to torture' + rauko 'demon').

The last etymology, appearing in Quendi and Eldar, derives Balrog as the Sindarin translation of the Quenya form Valarauko (Demon of Might). This etymology was published in The Silmarillion.

The Sindarin plural for Balrog is not known. Tolkien consistently used Balrogs, but this is generally considered an anglicization because Sindarin does not form plurals that way. In one case Tolkien used Balrogath, similar to Periannath 'Halflings' and Dagorath 'battles'. However, the -ath suffix was often used as a 'class plural' (cf. giliath 'all stars of the firmament'), and thus Balrogath might mean 'Balrogkind' rather than simply 'Balrogs'. Linguists disagree about how a simple Sindarin plural would be formed, but most often suggest either *Balroeg or *Belryg.

The plural of Quenya Valarauko is attested as Valaraukar.

Gandalf on the bridge of Khazad-dûm calls the Balrog "flame of Udûn" (Udûn being the Sindarin name of Morgoth's fortress Utumno).

Gothmog is called a "son of Melko", though creatures that appear as offspring of the Valar in early versions of the stories become Maiar in later versions.