Sunday, March 15, 2026

Azanulbizar, azanulkizar, Azano, azan-kesh

These two words appear in Words 1:1. The first is the Khuzdul name for Dimrill Dale, for which Tolkien provided two possible analyses.

In the first analysis, azan is the plural of the noun uzn "dimness, shadow," and -ul is a genitive suffix ("of"), so that azanul means "of shadows." The final element is the plural noun bizâr "streams, rills." Thus the name means "rills of shadows." In the second analysis, azan is an adjective meaning "dark, dim," ûl means "streams," and bizar means "a dale or valley." Thus the whole name matches more precisely the English Dimrill Dale. Daymon's own gloss is "valley of shadows" -- taking azanul from the first analysis and bizar from the second.

Depending on which analysis we go with, then, azanulkizar could mean either "kizar of shadows" or "dim-rill kizar." In Faithful, Daymon glosses it as "the shadow of your king's," which does not seem possible. In an unpublished spreadsheet, he instead translates it as "canyon of shadows," which is more plausible, though there is nothing in Tolkien to suggest what kizar might mean. Searching Eldamo for kis- (since the spelling with z turns up nothing) yields Early Quenya (not Khuzdul) words like kirkis "cleft, crack" and kisin "cleft," so I assume that is where Daymon got "canyon" from. These are not all that similar to kizar, though. A single word containing both Khuzdul and Quenya morphemes doesn't seem likely, but we already know that these Words are a mishmash of different languages.

Related words elsewhere include Azano in Words 1:4, glossed "the Shadow"; and azan-kesh in Words 1:8, glossed "other shadows." The second element in the latter is apparently from Tolkien's early root √KES "other." Azano as "the Shadow" is curious since, as noted above, the singular of azan is uzn. Khuzdul never suffixes -o to words, and in fact that vowel is virtually nonexistent in the Khuzdul words we have. (I believe Gabilgathol is the only Khuzdul word to include the letter o.) So this is apparently a Khuzdul loanword inflected according to the grammar of some other language.

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Azanulbizar, azanulkizar, Azano, azan-kesh

These two words appear in Words 1:1 . The first is the Khuzdul name for Dimrill Dale, for which Tolkien provided two possible analyses. In t...