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appendix e 1467
So also in the case of the personal and place-names of Rohan
(where they have not been modernized), except that here éa and
éo are diphthongs, which may be represented by the ea of English
bear, and the eo of Theobald; y is the modified u. The modernized
forms are easily recognized and are intended to be pronounced
as in English. They are mostly place-names: as Dunharrow (for
Dúnharg), except Shadowfax and Wormtongue.
II
WRITING
The scripts and letters used in the Third Age were all ultimately
of Eldarin origin, and already at that time of great antiquity.
They had reached the stage of full alphabetic development, but
older modes in which only the consonants were denoted by full
letters were still in use.
The alphabets were of two main, and in origin independent,
kinds: the Tengwar or Tîw, here translated as ‘letters’; and the
Certar or Cirth, translated as ‘runes’. The Tengwar were devised
for writing with brush or pen, and the squared forms of inscriptions
were in their case derivative from the written forms. The
Certar were devised and mostly used only for scratched or incised
inscriptions.
The Tengwar were the more ancient; for they had been
developed by the Noldor, the kindred of the Eldar most skilled
in such matters, long before their exile. The oldest Eldarin letters,
the Tengwar of Rúmil, were not used in Middle-earth. The later
letters, the Tengwar of Fëanor, were largely a new invention,
though they owed something to the letters of Rúmil. They were
brought to Middle-earth by the exiled Noldor, and so became
known to the Edain and Númenóreans. In the Third Age their
use had spread over much the same area as that in which the
Common Speech was known.
The Cirth were devised first in Beleriand by the Sindar, and
were long used only for inscribing names and brief memorials
upon wood or stone. To that origin they owe their angular
shapes, very similar to the runes of our times, though they differed
from these in details and were wholly different in arrange-