The Language of Rohan: Rohirric, Old English, and Every Word in the Films

Quick Answer: The Riders of Rohan speak Rohirric, a language of Men that Tolkien never actually shows. Because he "translated" the Common Speech into modern English, he rendered Rohirric, an older relative of that speech, as Old English. So Théoden is Old English þēoden, "lord", Meduseld is "mead-hall", and Éowyn is "horse-joy". Genuine Rohirric survives in only a few words, such as kûd-dûkan, "hole-dweller".

Rohan is the part of Middle-earth that sounds most like England before the Norman Conquest, and that is deliberate. Its king is called Théoden, its hall is Meduseld, its riders greet their lord with Westu Théoden hál, and a lament for fallen warriors echoes an Anglo-Saxon poem. Tolkien was a professor of Anglo-Saxon, and in Rohan he used his day job.

This guide covers what the Rohirrim actually speak, why it comes out as Old English, what the famous names mean, which lines are Tolkien's and which were written for the films, and whether you can learn any of it.

What the Rohirrim actually speak

Inside the fiction, the Riders of the Mark speak their own language, which scholars and fans call Rohirric (Tolkien sometimes calls it "the language of Rohan" or "the tongue of the Mark"). Its speakers descend from the Éothéod, Northmen who once lived near the upper Anduin before riding south to settle the plains that Gondor gave them.

Most Rohirrim also know the Common Speech (Westron), and they use it with Gondorians and travellers. Among themselves, and in songs, oaths and names, they keep Rohirric.

Appendix F of The Return of the King explains the relationship. Rohirric and Westron both descend, in part, from the languages of Men in the north. Rohirric had stayed closer to the old speech, while Westron had mixed with Adûnaic and borrowed from Elvish. That family relationship is the key to everything that follows.

The Old English trick

Tolkien presents The Lord of the Rings as a translation of a hobbit manuscript written in Westron. He translated that Westron into modern English (see our guide to Westron, the Common Speech for how that works).

That created a problem. If Westron becomes English, what should a language related to Westron, but older, become? Tolkien's answer, set out in Appendix F, was to render Rohirric as Old English, the ancestor of modern English. For English readers, Rohan should sound the way Rohirric sounded to hobbits: familiar in places, archaic, and clearly kin to their own speech.

This is why:

• Rohan's names are Old English words (Théoden, Éomer, Háma, Gríma).
• Rohan's places are Old English compounds (Edoras, Meduseld, Dunharrow, Helm's Deep).
• The rare phrases in Rohirric are given as Old English (Westu Théoden hál).

Tolkien also carried the idea further. Hobbits, whose ancestors once lived near the Rohirrim's ancestors, kept some old words related to Rohirric. Tolkien rendered those as old or dialect English words, which is why hobbit vocabulary includes forms like smial (a hobbit hole) that look like fossils of Old English.

The Mercian flavour

There is a further layer that only a philologist would have bothered with. Old English was not one language but a group of dialects. Most surviving texts are in West Saxon, the dialect of Wessex. Tolkien, who grew up in the West Midlands, had a special interest in Mercian, the Old English of the Midlands.

Scholars, notably Tom Shippey in The Road to Middle-earth, have pointed out that many Rohan names follow Mercian rather than West Saxon spelling. The clearest example is Saruman. The Old English word for "skill, cunning" is searu in Mercian (West Saxon searo), so Saruman is roughly "man of skill" in a Midlands accent. The land itself is the Mark (Riddermark), which echoes Mierce, "the people of the border", from which Mercia takes its name.

This is scholarly interpretation, not something Tolkien spells out in the book. But it fits everything we know about him: in Rohan, he was quietly giving his home region the heroic Old English literature that history had mostly given to Wessex.

Rohan names decoded

Here are the most searched Rohan names with the Old English words behind them. These are standard Old English etymologies, not invented Rohirric glosses.

Two notes on the table. First, Orthanc has a double life. In Sindarin it means "forked height", and in Rohirric (Old English) it happens to mean "cunning mind". Tolkien noted the coincidence himself, and it suits Saruman's tower well. Second, Dernhelm is a lovely example of Tolkien hiding a clue in plain sight. Any Old English reader would know from the name alone that the rider was hiding something.

Genuine Rohirric: the handful of words that survive

Because Tolkien translated Rohirric into Old English, very little of the "real" language appears. Appendix F gives the most important form:

• kûd-dûkan, "hole-dweller". The Rohirric word for a hobbit, and the source of the hobbits' own name for themselves, kuduk. Tolkien "translated" it into Old English as holbytla, and holbytla is the imagined ancestor of the English word hobbit. So when Théoden calls Merry a holbytla, Tolkien is showing the step between the real Rohirric and the English we read.

Appendix F also discusses the Mannish names of Sméagol and Déagol from the Anduin vale, Trahald ("burrowing, worming in") and Nahald ("secret"). These come from the speech of Men closely related to the ancestors of the Rohirrim. Tolkien gives them to explain why he used Old English equivalents.

Beyond these, some fans cite longer lists of "real Rohirric" drawn from Tolkien's draft notes in The History of Middle-earth. The words there are few and often tentative. We do not list them as usable vocabulary, and we'd advise caution with any site that offers dozens of them with confident meanings.

Attested phrases: Tolkien's own lines

These are the Old English lines Tolkien himself wrote into The Lord of the Rings. They are canon.

Westu Théoden hál! Éowyn says this in The Two Towers ("The King of the Golden Hall") when she brings Théoden the cup in Meduseld. It is roughly "Be thou well, Théoden!", a traditional Old English wish for health. Hál is the ancestor of modern English whole and hale.

Ferthu Théoden hál! This appears in The Return of the King as a salute to the king, roughly "Go forth, Théoden, in good health!" It uses the same hál as Westu, with a verb of going in place of a verb of being.

Holbytla. The Old English "translation" of kûd-dûkan, discussed above, and Théoden's word for the hobbits.

These lines are short, but they are important because they are the only places where Tolkien lets the Rohirrim's "original" speech show through the English narrative.

The Lament of the Rohirrim

In "The King of the Golden Hall", Aragorn recites a Rohan poem that begins with the famous question Where now the horse and the rider? Aragorn says it was made by a forgotten poet of Rohan, and he speaks it in the Common Speech after first chanting it in Rohirric.

The model is the Old English poem The Wanderer, one of the great Anglo-Saxon elegies. Its best-known lines ask where the horse and the young warrior have gone, Hwær cwom mearg? Hwær cwom mago? ("Where has the horse gone? Where the young man?"). Tolkien, who taught and translated Old English poetry, built Rohan's lament on that pattern of mourning questions. It is the clearest example of Rohan's culture being "translated" from real Anglo-Saxon literature.

Old English in the films (labelled film material)

Peter Jackson's films expanded Rohan's language, using real Old English written for the production. None of it is Tolkien's own text, but it is carefully made and grammatical Old English, not gibberish. The main pieces are:

• Éowyn's dirge for Théodred. In the extended edition of The Two Towers, Éowyn sings a funeral song in Old English at her cousin's burial. The text was written for the film, based on Philippa Boyens's English lyrics, and rendered into Old English by David Salo, the linguist behind the films' Elvish.
• The Rohan theme songs. The soundtrack includes Old English lyrics, among them an adaptation of the "Where now the horse and the rider" lament. The film's Old English version is a new translation, not a text Tolkien wrote.
• Scattered lines in dialogue and battle. Some shouted commands and short phrases in Rohan scenes are Old English prepared for the films.

Two cautions if you want to use any of this:

1. Label it as film Old English. It is not Tolkien. Quoting Éowyn's dirge as "the Rohirric funeral song from the book" is simply wrong. The book has no such song.
2. Check the source before copying a line. Fan transcriptions of film Old English circulate with spelling errors and invented translations. For anything you'd engrave or tattoo, go back to a reliable published source or a trained Old English reader.

For the Elvish lines from the same films, including what is Tolkien and what is Salo, see Elvish Words in the Lord of the Rings Movies.

Can you learn Rohirric?

As Rohirric, no. Tolkien left almost none of it, and the rest was always meant to stay behind the Old English "translation".

As Old English, yes, and this makes Rohan unusual among Middle-earth's minor languages. Old English is a real, fully documented language with a large literature, including Beowulf, The Wanderer and The Battle of Maldon. There are standard university grammars and readers, and you can learn to read it. If you want to speak like a Rider of the Mark, learning Old English is the honest route. It is also the route Tolkien himself would have recommended.

There's a catch, though. Old English is a historical language, so learning it means reading texts rather than holding conversations. And it is not a Tolkien language: it was his model for Rohan, but he did not invent it.

Why Elvish is the Tolkien language to learn

If what you want is a language that Tolkien himself invented, with grammar you can use to build your own sentences, the answer is Elvish. Quenya and Sindarin are the only Middle-earth languages Tolkien developed to that depth. He wrote grammars, poems, letters and huge word lists for them over sixty years.

That contrast is worth thinking about. Rohirric shows Tolkien borrowing a real language as a mask. Quenya and Sindarin show him building languages from nothing. Both are brilliant, but only one set was made to be spoken in Middle-earth's own voice.

• The Learn Elvish course teaches attested Quenya and Sindarin from the first word, starting with free lessons.
• The Tengwar name tool writes your name in Tolkien's Elvish script. It is a good place to start if Rohan's naming habits got you wondering what your own name would look like in Middle-earth.
• The Elvish translator maps English phrases to attested Elvish words.

People Also Ask

What language do the Rohirrim speak? The Rohirrim speak Rohirric, a language of Men distantly related to Westron, the Common Speech. Tolkien never gives it directly. Because he rendered Westron as modern English, he rendered Rohirric, an older relative, as Old English, which is why Rohan's names and phrases sound Anglo-Saxon.

What does "Westu Théoden hál" mean? It is Old English for roughly "Be thou well, Théoden", a wish for health and good fortune. Éowyn says it when she offers Théoden the cup in Meduseld in The Two Towers. It is Tolkien's own line, not a film addition.

What does Éowyn mean? Éowyn is built from Old English eoh, "horse", and wynn, "joy", so it is usually read as "horse-joy". Éomer combines eoh with mǣre, "famous".

Is Rohirric a real language you can learn? Rohirric itself survives in only a few words, such as kûd-dûkan, "hole-dweller". But Old English, the language Tolkien used to represent it, is real and fully documented, and you can learn it from university grammars and readers.

Related Reading

• Westron: The Real Common Speech of Middle-earth
• Beyond Elvish: Every Other Language Tolkien Invented
• Elvish Words in the Lord of the Rings Movies
• Entish Explained: Treebeard's Unspeakable Language
• Tolkien's Elvish Languages: The Complete Guide to All Six
• A Brief History of Constructed Languages

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