An upland region in the far west of Gondor, bounded to the west by the River Lefnui, and to the east by the Morthond. It lay behind the long shoreline known as Anfalas or Langstrand. The name is translated 'Green Hills' (not to be confused with the Green Hills that ran through the Shire, far to the north of Pinnath Gelin).
At the time of the War of the Ring, the lord of this region was Hirluin the Fair. He led three hundred of his soldiers to the defence of Minas Tirith, all dressed in green, as seems to have been the custom among the hills of Pinnath Gelin. Hirluin never went back to the Green Hills of his home - he was slain in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields.
Notes
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As the most remote of Gondor's provinces, it seems doubtful that all the Men of Pinnath Gelin were descended from the Dúnedain. Their leader Hirluin the Fair had a Sindarin name, suggesting that he probably had Dúnadan ancestry, but this was not necessarily true of all of Hirluin's people.
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By far the most commonly-used Elvish word for 'hills' is emyn rather than pinnath. Pinnath is in fact unique in this context; it comes from a word for 'slope' or 'hillside' combined with a plural ending indicating a very large number. The word gelin is simply a pluralised from of galen, 'green'. In combination, then, the name Pinnath Gelin suggests a 'host of green hillsides', and in different sources Tolkien himself interprets the name as either 'green downs' or 'green ridges'.
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- Updated 6 December 2021
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