Q: What Does “Aragorn” Mean?
ANSWER: For many years readers of The Lord of the Rings puzzled over the meaning of Aragorn’s name. A popular suggestion was “royal tree”, perhaps because that was the definition Robert Foster proposed in his Complete Guide to Middle-earth. An earlier suggestion was “tree king”, as put forth by Richard Jeffery in the preamble to Letter No. 347. Jeffery had written to J.R.R. Tolkien in 1972 asking several questions, the last of which was summarized in the preamble as: “Could Aragorn mean ‘treeking’ (with lenition of *gorn to orn in Celeborn, etc.), and Arathorn possibly ‘Two-trees-king’, with reference to the Two Trees?” To this question Tolkien responded:
5. Aragorn etc. This cannot contain a ‘tree’ word (see note).† ‘Tree-King’ would have no special fitness for him, and it was already used by an ancestor. The names in the line of Arthedain are peculiar in several ways; and several, though S. in form, are not readily interpretable. But it would need more historical records and linguistic records of S. than exist (sc. than I have found time or need to invent!) to explain them. The system by which all the names from Malvegil onwards are trisyllabic, and have only one ‘significant’ element‡ (ara being used where the final element was of one syllable; but ar in other cases) is peculiar to this line of names. The ara is prob. derived from cases where aran ‘king’ lost its n phonetically (as Arathorn), ara– then being used in other cases.
As an aside: Lenition, for those of us who are not sure, refers to the process by which the speakers of a language gradually drop or soften a consonantal sound in the pronunciation of words. So Tolkien said that the Ara- in Aragorn might be related to aran (“royal”). In fact, in the foreword to The Peoples of Middle-earth Christopher Tolkien published a remarkable revelation concerning the name Aragorn, thus demystifying the thing after many years. He wrote:
Lastly, after the proofs of this book had been revised I received a letter from Mr Christopher Gilson in which he referred to a brief but remarkable text associated with Appendix A that he had seen at Marquette. This was a curious chance, for he had no knowledge of the book beyond the fact that it contained some account of the Appendices; while although I had received a copy of the text from Marquette I had passed it over without observing its significance. Preserved with other difficult and disjointed notes, it is very roughly written on a slip of paper torn from a rejected manuscript. That manuscript can be identified as the close predecessor of the Appendix A text concerning the choice of the Half-elven which I have given on pp. 256-7. The writing on the verso reads: and his father gave him the name Aragorn, a name used in the House of the Chieftains. But Ivorwen at his naming stood by, and said ‘Kingly Valour’ (for so that name is interpreted): ‘that he shall have, but I see on his breast a green stone, and from that his true name shall come and his chief renown: for he shall be a healer and a renewer.’
Above this is written: ‘and they did not know what she meant, for there was no green stone to be seen by other eyes’ (followed by illegible words); and beneath it: ‘for the green Elfstone was given to him by Galadriel’. A large X is also written, but it is not clear whether this relates to the whole page or only to a part of it. Mr Gilson observes that this text, clearly to be associated with work on the Tale of Aragorn and Arwen (see p. 263), seems to be the only place where the name Aragorn is translated; and he mentions my father’s letter of 17 December 1972 to Mr Richard Jeffery (Letters no. 347), who had asked whether Aragorn could mean ‘tree-king’….
So now we believe we know that Aragorn means “kingly valor” (or “kingly valour” in the British spelling). The revelation sheds light on some other names, such as Aradan, the Elvish name given to Malach son of Marach, who spent 14 years in Hithlum. Robert Foster translates this name as “King’s Man” but perhaps in light of the above we could argue that it might mean “Kingly Man”, such that Malach was being singled out for special significance as the future leader of the House of Marach (the Third House of the Edain). All of Numenor’s kings (and Elrond for that matter) claimed descent from Malach Aradan through his great-great-grandson Galdor, father of Hurin and Huor.
Other names which might be re-interpreted include Araglas (from “Royal Leaf” through “Royal Joy” to “Kingly Joy”); Arador (from “Royal Land” through “Royal Lord” to “Kingly Land” or “Royal Lord” — -dor seems to be translated according The Silmarillion entry for “Thorondor”, “King of Eagles”); Arathorn (from “Royal Eagle” to “Kingly Eagle”). One must be careful not to assume that Ara- (“kingly”) is necessarily the element in all these names. Carl Hostetter in his essay “Elvish As She Is Spoke” observed “…that Tolkien himself was neither fluent in either of his two chief Elvish languages, nor himself able to compose in them with anything like the facility that would be required to produce substantial amounts of Elvish narrative.” Some people who are far more skilled in the learning and analysis of languages than I have attempted to provide clarity for all or nearly all of the Elvish words and expressions Tolkien published and/or scribbled on various pieces of paper. These attempts to definitively deduce the true meanings and sources of Tolkien’s words are laced with personal perspectives that have not quite won universal acceptance among those who know how these kinds of things work.
So while it may be rather fun to try to decipher the hundreds or thousands of words and names Tolkien used in his stories, we cannot be sure of any specific meaning — not as sure as we can be of the meaning of common words in the languages we use around the world today. Hence, as Carl also mentions in his essay, a sort of “Neo-elvish” tradition has emerged from the study of Tolkien’s works which (much like many non-linguistic analyses of those same works) relies extensively on “Conflation and Circularity”. Carl begins his criticism and response to these methods by writing: “First and foremost, due to its homogenizing and standardizing tendencies, ‘Neo-Elvish’ is characterized by conflation of materials and evidence from often widely separated conceptual phases, and by consequent circularity in reasoning about this evidence. What is referred to by some as ‘mature’ Quenya and ‘mature’ Sindarin ‘of the Lord of the Rings era’ are in fact artificially selected and dubiously homogenized sets of data spanning decades of ‘fluctuations’ in Tolkien’s aesthetic conception, which are nonetheless assumed and then asserted to be essentially uniform in nature and conception….”
On the basis of that cautionary word, I must submit that while it seems reasonable to look for help in deciphering Tolkien’s names on the Internet (and I have often done this myself), you should not expect everyone to agree with your choice of sources — and I, in fact, am one of the poorest of choices in the matter of linguistic sources.
About all that we can say definitively concerning Tolkien’s meaning for “Aragorn” is that, apparently, at one time in his life he defined it as “kingly valor” — but we don’t know why the text of “The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen” was never amended to include the brief anecdote Christopher Gilson uncovered. At best we can say that nothing else so far discovered discounts the value of the note; at worst we must concede that it lacks the usual “canonicality” of having been published by Tolkien within his lifetime, thus depriving it of any context for placement within the various periods of his writing.
If J.R.R. Tolkien had published only one edition of The Hobbit and only one edition of The Lord of the Rings, and these two books were entirely consistent with each other, the homogenization that Carl Hostetter refers to (and which I have often deplored in the rather weak attempts at Tolkien scholarship by certain online personalities) would be much less of a consideration in these types of analyses.
So while I cannot tell you that Aragorn really means “kingly valor”, I will say that — barring any unforeseen revelations in the future coming from the archives at Marquette University — it’s good enough for me. You’ll have to decide for yourself whether it’s good enough for you.
UPDATE: Hold on, you say. What about “Words, Phrases, and Passages in The Lord of the Rings”, published in Parma Eldalamberon 17 in 2007? Fair question. That document, edited by Christopher Gilson, translates Aragorn as “revered king” using gorn (“dreadful,revered”) as the root for the second element in Aragorn’s name. In response to that I can only ask, have you read my essays “Is Your Canon on the Loose?” and “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Canon”. I will have to leave you with that.
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