sauron studies

Another layer to the ‘Sauron’s name’ mystery, hmm??? This is the first I’d heard of this particular bit of lore - that Sauron does not even permit his own followers to speak his name (Sauron, that is, not Mairon). Of course, Aragorn incorrectly refers to Sauron as his ‘right name’ but we’ll excuse that because he wouldn’t know the name Mairon (and also because in this paragraph they’re referring to the mark of ‘S’ on White-hand orc armor). There’s always been much discussion about the relationship Mairon has to his names, with a general agreement that he came to ‘accept’ the name Sauron after Numenor based on what is given in canon and some speculation on our part into his emotional journey. But this is rather interesting to me, that while the name Sauron is used to instill fear and authority, he himself still doesn’t like it being used, preferring the red eye symbolism over a brand name. To me, the best explanation I can come up with at the moment is that, while he accepted this title, at the point where it truly fit him and the last shreds of his beauty and grace were gone, he still abhorred the name Abhorred. He didn’t like being reminded that’s all he was. It reopens the question, to me, of how he referred to himself during the Third Age. 

So, Sauron is a Quenyan name. 

It also comes from “Thauron.”

So here’s what we know:

It was a Noldo who gave him that name

A Noldo who knew he was once Mairon, since Sauron is somewhat of a thing off that (Beloved-one –> Hated-one, basically)

Had to be a Noldo that actually knew him and thus knew he earned the name. He wasn’t in Valinor with the elves, so they wouldn’t have met him until middle earth.

Why Thauron first? What part of Quenyan uses the Th instead of the S? Feanorians. Only Feanorians.

Obviously it was Maedhros who gave him the name and I think that’s hilarious. 

“Hey man who did you meet in Angband?”

After a certain point in time, among the Noldor, the Feanorians were the only ones to continue using ‘th’ in speech. Though in writing, the ‘th’ letter is preserved. But the fact that Sauron’s name comes from an older form “thaurond-” doesn’t imply that it was a Feanorian who gave him the name. It’s more like, it so happens that his name comes from one of the many words which used to be pronounced with a ‘th’ by all the Noldor, which now is pronounced ‘s,’ but continues to be spelled with a ‘th’ in writing.

So, some random non-Feanorian Noldo could have given Sauron the name Sauron (with an ‘s’ sound), and we would still know that Sauron comes from thaurond-. Because Tolkien was particular about such things and made a note of it.

I think the key thing here is that the name ‘Sauron’ did not come from ‘Thauron’ in the sense of ‘he originally was given the name Thauron.’ Rather, ‘Sauron’ comes from the older form thaurond-.