MORDORER

The explanation given in the published Silmarillion is certainly consistent with a late (and so, some will think, virtually “canonical”) analysis of the name Sauron that appears in a draft letter from 1967. Tolkien here pooh-poohed the idea of some critics that the Greek word saura “lizard” was the real source of the name Sauron. (This Greek noun gives us the final syllable of dinosaur, and so we have the association to dragons, the dragon being a traditional symbol of Satan – and since Tolkien himself wrote about the “Satanic rebellion of Morgoth and his satellite Sauron” [Letters:202], the chain of semantic connections might seem seductively complete!) But Tolkien in his draft letter cited a wholly “internal” explanation of the name: The ultimate source was an Elvish root THAW, with such prehistoric derivatives as the adjective θaurâ “detestable” (the initial Greek letter here represents th as an aspirate). The name Sauron is said to be a “contemporary” (i.e. Third Age?) form of θaurond-, an ancient noun-formation based on that adjective (Letters:380). In Quenya, the adjective would have appeared as saura (archaic thaura), and the name Sauron would be a later pronunciation of Thauron, exactly as stated in the Silmarillion Appendix.