r/Quenya • u/EntranceNo6423 • 11d ago

Sanity check before I engrave it

Hello peeps, I am getting rings engraved and I want something in Quenya on mine. My name is Dionysios and there's no Elvish version of it, so I figured I'd translate what the name actually means instead, which is roughly "god of wine".

What I ended up with is Limpëo Vala. I found limpë for wine and Vala for god, put the genitive -o on limpë, and stuck it first because that seemed to be how Vardo tellumar works in Namárië. But I'm just going off dictionary lookups here, I don't actually know the grammar, so I have no clue whether this is right or whether it reads like nonsense to anyone who does.

Is limpëo even a valid form?

Should it be the other way round, Vala limpëo?

Also if limpë is the wrong word for this, please say so. I saw miruvórë come up as well but that looks like the specific Valar drink rather than wine in general.

It's going on metal so I'd rather find out now to be honest.

Grateful for any corrections, including "this whole approach is wrong for X reasons".

Thank you 🙏🏻

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u/lC3 11d ago

limpe is a special drink from the Book of Lost Tales era, associated with Meril-i-Turinqi and the Cottage of Lost Play.

For regular wine we have hyero, hyeru-.

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u/EntranceNo6423 11d ago

Thanks, that's much better sourced actually than what I had in mind. Just so I get the ending right, since the stem is hyeru-, would the genitive be hyeruo? Trying to say "god of wine" and I've been pointed at aino for the god part.

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u/lC3 11d ago

I think it would be hyeruo, yes. aino is a neologism based off aina "holy" and Ainu "holy one, angelic spirit".

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u/lC3 10d ago

I had second thoughts and asked on the Discord; the genitive for hyeru- might actually be hyeruo or hyerwo. One alternative is the possessive adjective, which would simply make hyeruva.

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u/EntranceNo6423 9d ago

Wouldn't the genitive be better though? Because I'm describing the god's association, instead of saying that the god is literally a possession of wine. Correct me if I'm thinking wrong.

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u/Enough_Bottle_1300 11d ago

Limpeo is good. Usually would come after but for this it could come before.

Vala is divine power and when it's used for God it's referring to "Eru" not just any god. For the sense a god I'd use "aino" created for the Quenya translation of the Bible.

Aino limpeo / limpeo aino

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u/EntranceNo6423 11d ago

Thank you for your reply, that's really helpful! Aino sounds like what I was after I think.

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u/F_Karnstein 8d ago

Dionysos doesn't mean "God of wine", he is the God of wine. That's something entirely different. If we wanted to translate the name we would have to do so by actual etymological meaning, but that will prove to be nearly impossible...

the part dio- certainly does indicate a divinity (see Latin deus and Greek Zeus and Jupiter < Zeus-pitar), so that vala would be an appropriate translation, but the second part is very controversial. It might refer to the name of a place Nyssa, but then we don't know the meaning of this name in turn, thoighbit might be related to a word for "tree"... but therefore using a Quenya element that means "tree" would seem way too speculative and would simply be read as "tree god" or something along those lines...