After the people of Eorl began to settle in the old Gondorian region of Calenardhon, they gave it a new name in their own tongue, calling it the 'Riddermark', the borderland of the Riders. In Gondor, however, Elvish nomenclature was preferred and so Hallas (the son of Steward Cirion who had gifted the land to the Riders) devised the Sindarin name Rochand ('horse-land') for the newly settled grasslands.
It was typical for Elvish place-names ending in -nd to lose their final 'd' in speech, and so the new land's common name in Gondor evolved to become Rochan, a change that would in fact only represent a step in the development of the name.2 The Sindarin ch sound did not exist in the Common Tongue, and so as the name became more widely used it also changed further, ultimately giving rise to Rohan, the land's familiar name at the time of the War of the Ring.
Notes
1 |
The land of Rohan was established in III 2510, but the name Rohan was a later linguistic development, and would not have been used immediately. The earlier form Rochan represents part of the evolution of later Rohan, which appeared sometime after the land's foundation, and was in turn displaced by Rohan. The dating of these linguistic developments is not explained, but these transformations must have occurred during the five centuries before the end of the Third Age (by which time the later form Rohan had become universally used). |
2 |
The precise sequence of development of the name is difficult to discern, because our accounts of its various steps come from different sources. The natural assumption would be that the name developed from the original Rochand through Rochann to Rochan, and thence to the final form Rohan. However, while we know that the intermediate forms Rochann and Rochan both existed, their relationship to one another is not established beyond doubt.
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- Updated 30 July 2018
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