Fëanor Name Meaning: "Spirit of Fire" and the Maker of the Silmarils

Quick Answer: Fëanor means "spirit of fire". It is the Sindarin-shaped form of the Quenya name Fëanáro, from fëa ("spirit, soul") and nár ("fire"). His mother Míriel gave him that name. His father-name was Curufinwë, "skill" plus his father's name Finwë. He is the Elf who made the Silmarils and devised the Tengwar.

Fëanor is the greatest craftsman among the Elves and the cause of most of the grief in The Silmarillion. He made the three Silmarils, the jewels that held the light of the Two Trees. He swore the Oath that drove his sons through centuries of war. He also gave the Elves their best-known writing system.

His name was a prophecy and a description at once. This post takes it apart, explains why there are two forms of it, and covers the other name he carried.

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The Name at a Glance

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Word by Word: Fëa + Nár

Fëa: "spirit"

Fëa is one of the most important words in Tolkien's thinking about Elves. It names the spirit or soul, the immortal part of a person, as opposed to hröa, the body. When an Elf dies, the fëa goes to the Halls of Mandos. Tolkien's long essays on this, including the discussion of Fëanor's mother, are in Morgoth's Ring (HoME X).

The two dots on ë are not decoration. They tell you to say the vowel separately: fë-a, two syllables, not "fee". The same mark appears at the end of many Quenya words to show the final e is spoken.

Nár: "fire"

Nár is Quenya for fire; the fuller noun is nárë. The same root shows up across Tolkien's names. Narsil, Elendil's sword, and the fire-ring Narya both belong to it. For the Sindarin and Quenya fire words side by side, see Elvish word for fire.

Put them together and Fëanáro means "spirit of fire". The name does not describe his hair or his eyes. It describes what he was inside.

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Why His Mother Named Him "Spirit of Fire"

Fëanor's mother was Míriel. Bearing him exhausted her so completely that she said she would never bear another child. Her spirit left her body and went to Mandos, and she did not return (The Silmarillion, ch. 6, "Of Fëanor and the Unchaining of Melkor").

The Silmarillion says that she gave him the name Fëanáro, "spirit of fire", and the book adds that the fire of his spirit seemed to burn up the body that held it. When he died, in the first battles of the Noldor in Middle-earth, his body fell to ash as his spirit left it. The name fits him from birth to death.

Tolkien uses the idea on purpose. A fëa that is too strong for its hröa is exactly the theme of the Míriel debate in Morgoth's Ring. Fëanor's mother gave up her life to his making, and the name she chose names the thing that consumed her.

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Fëanáro and Fëanor: Two Forms of One Name

Fëanáro is the Quenya form, the name as his mother said it in Valinor. Fëanor is the form adapted to Sindarin, the language the exiled Noldor spoke once they came to Beleriand. When the Noldor arrived, Thingol forbade the use of Quenya in his realm, and they took on Sindarin for daily speech and Sindarin-shaped versions of their names.

Tolkien works through the history of these name-forms in a late essay, "The Shibboleth of Fëanor". It is published in The Peoples of Middle-earth (HoME XII), not in Unfinished Tales, which is a common mix-up. The "shibboleth" in the title is a quarrel over how one sound should be pronounced in Quenya, and Fëanor took one side of it fiercely.

So when you read Fëanor, you are reading the Middle-earth version of a Valinorean name. Both mean the same thing. The difference is only in sound: the long Quenya ending -áro is worn down to -or in the Sindarin shape, the way many Noldorin names were reshaped once they were spoken every day in Beleriand.

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Curufinwë: The Father-Name

Elves of the Noldor commonly had more than one name. Fëanor's father-name was Curufinwë. It joins curu, "skill", with Finwë, the name of his father, King of the Noldor (The Silmarillion, ch. 6).

Curu fits him as well as the fire does. In Sindarin curu means skill of the hand, craft, even magic. The same element appears in Curunír, the Elvish name of Saruman: curu "skill" plus -(n)dir "man", "man of skill". Tolkien does not say the two names are connected in meaning beyond the shared word, but the word itself, skill, is the thread.

The Silmarillion says Fëanor became known by his mother-name, not his father-name. One of his sons, Curufin, took the father-name in shortened form. Curufin's own son was Celebrimbor, the smith of Eregion who made the Three Rings, whose name means "silver fist" (celeb "silver" + paur "fist, hand"). The skill passed down three generations.

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Fëanor and the Tengwar

For anyone learning Elvish writing, Fëanor matters as an inventor. In Appendix E of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien writes that the Tengwar, the "Fëanorian letters", were devised by Fëanor in Valinor. He built on an older alphabet made by Rúmil, but his system was more ordered: letters grouped into series and grades so that the shape of a letter shows how its sound is made.

That is why the script is sometimes called the Fëanorian script. It is the script carved on the One Ring, though that inscription is in the Black Speech, and it is the one used across Gondor and Arnor. If you want to learn the letters, our Tengwar alphabet guide covers every tengwa, and the Tengwar name generator shows your own name in Fëanor's letters.

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Pronouncing Fëanor

Say it in three syllables: FAY-a-nor. The ë is a separate vowel, like the e in "they" without the glide, and it does not merge with the a. Under Tolkien's stress rule (LotR, Appendix E) a three-syllable word with a short second syllable is stressed on the first. The Quenya Fëanáro has a long á, so its stress moves: fay-a-NAH-ro.

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Using the Name

Fëanor is a heavy name to give a character. In Tolkien's own story it stands for genius and pride together: the greatest maker of the Elves and the one whose Oath doomed his house. If you want the meaning without the history, the elements themselves are attested and safe to use. Nár and fëa are real Quenya words. Building a new compound from them is your own invention, so present it as inspired by Tolkien, not as a name Tolkien gave.

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People Also Ask

What does the name Fëanor mean? Fëanor means 'spirit of fire'. It comes from the Quenya name Fëanáro, made of fëa 'spirit, soul' and nár 'fire'. Tolkien gives the meaning in The Silmarillion.

Why is it Fëanor and not Fëanáro? Fëanáro is the Quenya form his mother gave him. Fëanor is the form adapted to Sindarin, the language the Noldor spoke in Middle-earth. Tolkien discusses the forms in The Shibboleth of Fëanor, published in The Peoples of Middle-earth (HoME XII).

What was Fëanor's other name? His father-name was Curufinwë. It joins curu 'skill' with the name of his father Finwë, King of the Noldor. Fëanor was the name his mother Míriel gave him, and it is the one that stuck.

Did Fëanor create the Tengwar? Yes. In Appendix E of The Lord of the Rings Tolkien says the Tengwar were devised by Fëanor in Valinor, building on the earlier letters of Rúmil.

Related Reading

• Elvish Word for Fire — Sindarin & Quenya
• Tengwar Alphabet: Complete Guide to Tolkien's Elvish Writing System
• Elvish Names in Lord of the Rings: What Every Character's Name Means
• Lúthien Name Meaning: "Enchantress" and Tinúviel the Nightingale
• Galadriel Name Meaning: "Maiden Crowned with a Radiant Garland"
• Elvish Names for Men and Boys — How Tolkien Actually Built Them
• Tolkien's Elvish Languages: The Complete Guide to All Six
• Fëanor and the Silmarils: The Jewels That Doomed the Elves