Names
It is not clear from which of Tolkien's invented languages the names Alatar and Pallando are derived. A possible translation from Quenya for Alatar is after-comer and could be a reference to his being selected as the second Wizard, after Curunír (Saruman). Alatar could also mean "Noble, great one". Pallando can be translated from Quenya as far one from palan, meaning far or distant.
An alternate set of names in Quenya for both wizards is given in the 1968 The Peoples of Middle-earth as Morinehtar ("Darkness-slayer") and Rómestámo ("East-helper"). Like most names in Tolkien's works, these names are significant. Here, Rómestámo coming from the Quenya word rómen, meaning uprising, sunrise, east incorporates not only his relation to the East of Middle-earth, but also his mission there to encourage uprising and rebellion against Sauron. Tolkien does not make it clear which alternative name belongs to which wizard, however.
In Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game, the Blue Wizards are instead named as Naurandir and Sûlrandir - Games Workshop, which created the game, does not have rights to any books other than the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit, but was allowed to invent their own material to cover such areas.
Read more about this topic: Blue Wizards
Famous quotes containing the word names:
“And even my sense of identity was wrapped in a namelessness often hard to penetrate, as we have just seen I think. And so on for all the other things which made merry with my senses. Yes, even then, when already all was fading, waves and particles, there could be no things but nameless things, no names but thingless names. I say that now, but after all what do I know now about then, now when the icy words hail down upon me, the icy meanings, and the world dies too, foully named.”
—Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)
“I introduced her to Elena, and in that life-quickening atmosphere of a big railway station where everything is something trembling on the brink of something else, thus to be clutched and cherished, the exchange of a few words was enough to enable two totally dissimilar women to start calling each other by their pet names the very next time they met.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
““Well then, it’s Granny speaking: ‘I dunnow!
Mebbe I’m wrong to take it as I do.
There ain’t no names quite like the old ones, though,
Nor never will be to my way of thinking.
One mustn’t bear too hard on the newcomers,
But there’s a dite too many of them for comfort....’””
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)