Wraiths Before the Ring

[Alcuin]

Oh, if you want to speculate on the source of the names, I should say published Tolkien material at the time, D&D, and such late-night imbibings and libations as were common in the early- to middle-1980s.

“Er-Murazor” and “Adûnaphel” sound as if they might be faux-Adûnaic; “Adûnaphel” has –adun, Adûnaic for “west” in it. “Akhorahil” sounds as if it might be an attempt to get at a Sindarin-sounding name. (Akhorahil seems to have been called “the Blind Sorcerer” or “Akhorahil the Blind”.) “Er-Murazor”, “Akhorahil”, and “Adûnaphel” might all be worked out from what was known about Adûnaic and Sindarin at the time: you might start with the appendix to Silmarillion and see what was borrowed from the glossary; and there were other books published on Tolkien’s languages in the early 1980s, too. (I have one of them around here someplace…)

“Ji Indur Dawndeath” sounds like a character in Star Wars; it strikes me that it could be some corruption of the English “engender dawn death”, as in, “kill them at dawn”. “Ren the Unclean” kind of rhymes, and “Dwar of Waw” sort of alliterates. “Hoarmurath of Dir” reminds me of “hoar [old] muriatic acid”, leading to “hold the muriatic acid, dear.” “Uva the Horseman” – well, I can’t get anything out of that except ova, Latin for “eggs”, but then my imagination might not be what it used to be.

As I write, these names come back to me from decades ago, standing in the bookstore looking through the game books and wondering how these guys got the license after the first Lord of the Rings movies meshed with the D&D craze, and what they paid for it.

This is pure speculation and impression on my part. It all sounds silly, but I was a DM at the same time the guys at ICE were devising Nazgûl names. Coming up with names is a difficult business, especially when you have a deadline and lots of them to invent.

Anybody else who has a good idea should post it. Anyone who has any real knowledge – an old ICE or MERP employee or developer, perhaps – would be most welcome!