Michelle writes:
I have a question about Dwalin’s battle axes Grasper and Keeper. The first appears to be pronounced Uk Lat, but is the second pronounced Umrak (Angerthas Moria) or Umraks (Angerthas Erebor)? Angerthas Moria seems more likely, but I was hoping Angerthas Erebor might be used somewhere in the movie.
The two axes are supposed to be named Ukhlat “grasper, holder” and Umraz “keeper”, pointing toward roots KhLT “hold tight” and MRZ “keep, retain”, both with the same pattern uCCaC. The z-rune used is indeed the one used in the Angerthas Moria. I don’t remember my exact reasoning behind using the Angerthas Moria, but possibly I thought of the axes as very ancient relics, made before the settlement of Erebor.
The actual sources of the name-meanings (which I did not come up with) were the names of two dogs belonging to the novelist Emily Brontë.
If all the runic writing I created for the films actually appeared on screen, there would be a lot of Angerthas Erebor! But I don’t know how much will be seen; possibly more once the setting actually gets to Erebor itself.
I take it that the words Ukhlat “grasper, holder” and Umraz “keeper” are based on the pattern seen in Tolkien’s uzbad “lord”, which is then taken as an agentive formation meaning *”ruler” or similar (*ZBD “rule”?) So assuming ZRB as the root meaning “write” (underlying the word Mazarbul), a “scribe” or “writer” would be *uzrab, if the theory holds?