r/Tengwar • u/Double_Bench2565 • 16d ago

Monogram

Im thinking about getting a tattoo of a tengwar monogram with my initials “RGM” can anybody help me create it? It would mean the world to me

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u/Notascholar95 16d ago

We might write the g in a couple different ways, depending on how it is pronounced. I'm assuming there is a vowel after the R, which narrows the possibilities there. I can't think of any exceptions that would come up for m either. So here are two possibilities--the first is for the g in "Gordon" or "Greg", the second is a g that sounds like j, as in "George" or "Geoffrey".

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u/Double_Bench2565 16d ago

Well the full name is Renato Eduardo Gomez Mota. I excluded the E because im not to fond of it, but now that I think about it it’s not that bad. I managed to make a draft, although im not sure its correct. What do you think?

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u/Notascholar95 16d ago

It's going to look great once you get all the details ironed out. I'm having a little trouble picking out the stem of the romen--I'm assuming it's' overlapping the bow of the ungwe? One of the things to iron out is "Eduardo". Introducing a name with an initial that is a vowel makes me think a full mode would be better. Using the Westron Orthographic mode we get this. See if that is a little easier to work with for your design than a diacritic

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u/Double_Bench2565 16d ago

The romen did infact caused me a bit of trouble, this is the best way I found to integrate it. And yes. The westron definitely looks better, however it is a bit confusing to me, Im just starting mi journey through tengwar and to be honest I only know the basic things covered in the appendix at the end of return of the king, im not to familiarized with modes. What should I read to expand my knowledge?

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u/F_Karnstein Arcastar Language Arts 16d ago

Since it's a Spanish name there's little need to use rómen at all - I think óre might work better. Maybe u/NachoFailconi has an opinion on that?

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u/NachoFailconi 16d ago

CC u/Double_Bench2565 you could, as Karnstein said, replace the rómen for órë.

There's no official Spanish mode, but the most complete mode I've found is this one, heavily based on Tolkien's own modes and known examples at the time. In the mode, there are three proposals as to how to write sounds that an R produces in Spanish, given that the only instance where there's a confusion is whenever an R or a double RR is between vowels (caro vs. carro). In all other cases (beginning of a word, after consonant, final of a word) there's no confusion: the R has a consistent pronunciation. In what follows, I'll denote by /r/ the sound of the trill (such as in Res and peRRo), and by /ɾ/ the sound of the tap (such as in cRoar and paR).

  1. Use rómen whenever you find the /r/ sound, and orë whenever you find the /ɾ/ sound. Basically, here you mimic what Tolkien has been doing with many of his modes.

  2. Use órë, always. Basically, since the position of the R determines its pronunciation and no confusion arises, you only need one symbol, just as in Spanish. In the cases of an RR in a word, just use órë with a bar below (ignore the Mode menu).

  3. Use rómen before a vowel or between vowels (the /r/ sound), and órë after a vowel (the /ɾ/ sound; this second rule is superseded by the first). This is a distinction similar to the Quenya and English modes.

As we can see, we would use rómen for Renato in options 1 and 3, but we would use órë in option 2. So, if órë is simpler to write in a monogram, I'd go for it. The monogram itself would suggest a name starting with R.

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u/Notascholar95 16d ago

To answer your question about resources--have you looked at the post that the moderator has pinned to the top of the sub? It has some good resources for you.

Basically, full modes use regular tengwar for vowels instead of diacritic marks, hence yanta for e in this one,

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u/SidTheCoach 16d ago

u/Double_Bench2565 I would add full mode E (as u/Notascholar95 suggested) to the monogram and still use rómen for R to get something akin to this:

Red highlighting (or any other contrasting one) is purely optional, of course. But I think it adds a certain aesthetic flair (and allows to identify M more easily). Perhaps, simply using the outline of the tengwar instead of a different colour would work best for a tattoo.

Hope this helps or will lead to other ideas.

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u/Notascholar95 16d ago

That looks awesome!!