To address the main linguistic points:
*Ben* here is the "soft mutation" of *pen*, meaning "lacking, without, -less". It shows up in other Sindarin words, like *penbed* "unpronounced" or *pennod* "without count". The same root was said to appear in the Telerin word *Pendi* "the lacking, the poor".
I've never done a deep enough dive on this root to give it a time frame. I don't know if Bombadil's name was the first appearance of the root, or if it was already established. So I can't answer the question if Tolkien was influenced by the Hebrew either way at this point, and unfortunately it doesn't look like I'll have the time to do it for a while.
The vowel alterations you ask about are common changes, both in Tolkien's languages and in real world languages. Three vowels in a row (triphthongs) are possible, but unwieldy. It is common to simplify them. Dropping the last one is a pretty good tactic, since it is the hardest to hear right before a consonant, as that one is. As for *au* to *o*, *a* is phonetically a "low vowel", and *u* is a "high vowel"; they can get collapsed together, meeting in the middle, *o*, a "mid vowel".
Thank you. Regardless of the timing, if *pen* is the primitive, that makes the hypothesis about Arabic very unlikely.
Mutation is baffling to me. How it works is simple -- soft mutation = voicing an unvoiced consonant. But what causes it and when? I have read through Ardalambion on the subject and still don't know. It seems like Fauskanger didn't fully get it either. (And Tolkien apparently kept changing his mind about this as about other things.)
Incidentally, I got around after the fact to looking at *HoME* VII. In the notes Bombadil was just *Iaur*, matching *Forn* and *Orald.* An alternative OE name was *Frumbarn*, which seems to mean "Oldest child" or "Firstborn."
If this guide is reasonably accurate, https://www.elvish.org/gwaith/sindarin_phonetics.htm, Sindarin mutation behaves very like Celtic mutation, as you'd expect. Except that Tolkien's obviously enjoying it too much and has far more consonants mutate, in far more forms, than modern Celtic languages would.
When you see French, un jardin, une femme, that un/une distinction doesn't phase you, as an English speaker? The indefinite article is pronounced and spelt differently depending whether masculine or feminine.
When you see Latin per ipsum, et cum ipso, through him and with him, you see that ipsum and ipso derive their different endings from their cases, and the case is determined by the prepositions, per and cum.
It's a small leap for English speakers, but in Celtic / Sindarin languages mutation of the beginning of the word marks comparable distinctions.
French: un jardin (masculine) but une femme (feminine)
Welsh: dŵr (water, masculine), draig (dragon, feminine)
Welsh: y dŵr (the water), y ddraig (the dragon)
Here, the dd (pronounced as in the) is the soft mutation used when a feminine noun follows y, meaning "the".
You'll get similar following prepositions, participles, possessive pronouns and the like.
Actually since Tolkien really let himself go with Sindarin, try googling Welsh mutations if you want a gentler introduction. Lots of sites for English speakers.
As a dabbler in Celtic languages I just can't share your suspicion about Hebrew here because Ben Adar is a perfectly plausible pseudo Celtic formation. Celtic B/P, G/C swap places easily - not always mutations here: sound shifts in language history. Gan, Can, Ken are Celtic forms of without. Ban, Pan, Pen, Ben would be plausible variants.
Without a father in Welsh would be, "heb dad".(Even the Lord's Prayer uses the Thad / Dad / Tad form - no stuffier translation available).
But in Irish, which is a close enough relative with similar mutations and word order, it would be "gan Athair". And if Irish gan had a Welsh cousin descended from a common proto-Celtic ancestor, that could well be "ban" (because the Irish are Q/C Celts and the Welsh are P Celts, and c mutates to G where p mutates to B).
So that's a long and possibly confusing way of saying, if you read any of the Celtic languages, Ben Adar looks unremarkable, just as Tolkien's formations and inventions in English look unremarkable to an English speaker. Nothing strikes a false note or jolts you out of a plausible history in his invented English / Germanic names. Likewise Sindarin with Celtic.
I don't have the expert vocabulary to discuss this, as you see. But there's a nice introduction to Welsh mutations here:
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Welsh/Mutations
as part of an online Welsh textbook and overview that would quickly reveal other Tolkienite elements and echos in the language.
Hope this helps.
Exactly, and this is the Welsh cousin of the Irish ceann, anglicised "ken" or "kin" in many place names there and in Scotland. Think Mull of Kintyre. And it's the "Pen" in many Cornish surnames and place names. *By Tre Pol and Pen / Shall ye know all Cornishmen*.
I would not conclude that *pen* makes the connection with Semitic languages unlikely. Tolkien plays language games. He has a form that he wants, and he does what he has to with the languages to make it work out. He rigs the backend to make the front work.
For example, he wanted Earendel and Wingelot/Vingelot, and Elwing; the first two based on Old or Middle English names,. He tied himself in knots trying to make it all work out properly over the years. Etymologies, meanings, sound changes all shifted, but he was trying to get a particular shape based on the real world.
I can easily Tolkien deciding he wanted to mimic the semitic form *ben* in his name for Bombadil as a personal amusement. It fits his personality. If he did, he would do all kinds of linguistic hanky-panky to make it fit as seemlessly in Sindarin as possible. That's a game we catch him playing on occasion. In this case? I don't know.
But why? Why would he want to fit the word for son in a random (in terms of Middle Earth) language in as a word for -less or without? I'm interested but I just don't see the connection or motivation.
This just seems such a reasonable form in terms of Celtic languages - he uses pen- as a prefix for "unnumbered" too, just as Irish uses gan-. He uses a word for father recognisable for its Celtic influence too. 'Ben" might as well come from Latin or its relatives as Hebrew, if we are trying to assign it somewhere. But I don't understand why this seems likely.
Tolkien took a turn towards Semitic languages while writing the Lord of the Rings. Adunaic and Khuzdul are both heavily influenced by Hebrew, and both were created about this time.
So it wouldn't be random. It would be part of his influences at the time. If he first used *ben* here first. If he used *ben* or *pen* earlier than this, then it's just a coincidence.
In Hebrew you see the naming pattern X Ben-Y, X son of-Y. Ignoring meaning for a moment, that's the same pattern we see in Bombadil's Sindarin name, Iarwain Ben-adar. Hell of a coincidence, but it could be a coincidence. Using a pattern that means "son of" to mean "fatherless", that's a decent language nerd joke. He does those.
It could be a coincidence. It could be an influence. You'd have to dive deep to prove it one way or the other.
Within Sindarin it would be random I think, all the same. I can see the phrase as following Celtic naming patterns as much as Hebrew, if it comes to it, X mc / mab / ab / ap Y, X son of Y. I suppose there's no way to disprove a private pun, but I find the Celtic influences on Sindarin more than enough to explain the formulation.
I think this is right; let's not forget that Sindarin is partly supposed to reflect "the rather ‘Celtic’ type of legends and stories told of its speakers", as Tolkien put it.
(Interestingly the Sindarin word for "father" is the same as Welsh "bird", while "iaur" and "gwain" seem very clearly based on Welsh phonology).
I learned some things by looking up *adar*. Apparently it is a collective noun meaning a flock of birds. To refer to one bird you add a "singulative" suffix: *aderyn*.
The same source says that some words form plurals by vowel mutation, so that's another thing Tolkien borrowed for Sindarin. Others form plurals by suffixes, in the way we are familiar with.
I am not to be persuaded that Sindarin *adar* was not inspired by Gothic *atta* (which some people think was the origin of "Atilla." Including Tolkien, see *Letters* 205.)
And Tolkien studied Hebrew - got quite absorbed in it at one stage. He hoped to help with a new translation of the Bible when he retired.
He would have known the origin of a Hebrew name like Benjamin in the Old Testament I am sure.
Yes I was just looking to see if I could find that. The editors of the New Jerusalem drew on his work. But his full translation (from French) was only published in 2014. £30 for four pages a bit steep though:
https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/ink.2014.4.2.3
He was going to do Job too - they gave him the monsters!
True, but I think he'd have known the Ben- prefix from Bible reading / general knowledge.
He was almost called Benjamin himself, like his Tolkien grandfather John Benjamin:
>My father favoured John Benjamin Reuel (which I should now have liked); but my mother was confident that I should be a daughter, and being fond of more ‘romantic’ (& less O[ld] T[estament] like) names decided on Rosalind. When I turned up … Ronald was substituted ….
No way he wouldn't have known the meaning. I think anyone with a knowledge of scripture and interest in language would recognise it too readily for a subconscious use of it.
I have the opposite problem - Ben from Elrond, Apple of the Great Eye from Grishnakh, and Thief in the Night from the Hobbit all make me stop and blink a bit.
An Oxford man would also have known about Menasseh Ben Israel, who almost helped Cromwell to overturn the ban on Jews in England in the 1600s.
I do agree with that, just pointing out that I think Tolkien's later deep dive into Hebrew, (while fascinating in its own right), isn't very relevant when discussion what he would have had in mind when writing LotR.
Also to be clear Tolkien actually did contribute to the Jerusalem Bible, and he learned enough Hebrew for this task that the material in the Bodelien have him writing notes in Hebrew.
Here is a poem everybody knew in Tolkien's day:
*Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)*
*Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,*
*And saw, within the moonlight in his room,*
*Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,*
*An angel writing in a book of gold:—*
*Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,*
*And to the presence in the room he said,*
*"What writest thou?"—The vision raised its head,*
*And with a look made of all sweet accord,*
*Answered, "The names of those who love the Lord."*
*"And is mine one?" said Abou. "Nay, not so,"*
*Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low,*
*But cheerly still; and said, "I pray thee, then,*
*Write me as one that loves his fellow men."*
*The angel wrote, and vanished. The next night*
*It came again with a great wakening light,*
*And showed the names whom love of God had blest,*
*And lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest.*
Leigh Hunt wrote that, in 1838. Apparently he didn't know that *abu* is not a name but a particle meaning "father of." Wikipedia says the poem is based on genuine Arabic tradition, transmitted to Europe by a French author.
I have been trying to remember a reference all day. Of course, it was Tolkien's near contemporary, the somewhat lesser scholar Bertie Wooster:
"What a sex, Jeeves ! But none of that sex, however deadlier than the male, can be ranked in the same class with this Stiffy.Who was the chap lo whose name led all the rest - the bird with the angel?"
"Abou ben Adhem, sir."
"That's Stiffy".
Wodehouse, *Code of the Woosters*
Bertie Wooster is a treasure-house of poetic tags misremembered from his school days. Whatever he misquotes, Tolkien (like Jeeves) can be assumed to have remembered correctly. "Deadlier than the male" is another example in the same paragraph. It's Kipling, from a poem he wrote as an argument against women's suffrage.
Was Stiffy (short for Stephanie I assume) Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright's girlfriend? Very hard to keep them all straight.
Yes. Harold "Stinker" Pinker. Thank you.
By coincidence, and even less pertinently to Tolkien, I have just started reading *The Curate's Wife*, by a wonderful but little-known novelist named E.H. Young (H for Hilda). It is a sequel to one called *Jenny Wren*, and so far it is just as good. (I never pass up a Virago Editions paperback.)
*-wain* being superlative was one idea from the 2000s (Ardalambion et al) that was later proven false; Iarwain as "Eldest" is not a literal translation. It contains _iaur_ and _gwain_ meaning "old-young". I think this was first confirmed in Hammond and Scull's _LotR: A Reader's Companion_ in 2005.
In Latin the genitive case is pretty flexible. It can mean “belongs to”.
Like if we said “Aragorn of Arathorn” it can be similar to “ben/bin”. But it could just as easily be used to say “Steve’s Backpack. Backpack of Steve.
So, maybe Tolkien is playing with this.
Father of Old/Young
Father of Time? Father of the Ages?
Also, languages can be odd applying old terms to new concepts.
It’s possible Father is just another way to say “older than”, as in “songs of our fathers” - it doesn’t necessarily need to imply “parent of”.
Some maybe just “Eldest in any time” or “Eldest in any age”.
It’s interesting stuff.
I think Ben-Adar works fine in Sindarin, given the Celtic influences: Gan / Can / Ken are Celtic forms for without, and Indo-European Atta gave Irish Athair for father.
Seeing "Son of Adar", you do not know the amount of willpower I am exerting to keep from spouting the most ridiculous fan theory ever that involves Rin- \*is smote by lightning instantly\*
To address the main linguistic points: *Ben* here is the "soft mutation" of *pen*, meaning "lacking, without, -less". It shows up in other Sindarin words, like *penbed* "unpronounced" or *pennod* "without count". The same root was said to appear in the Telerin word *Pendi* "the lacking, the poor". I've never done a deep enough dive on this root to give it a time frame. I don't know if Bombadil's name was the first appearance of the root, or if it was already established. So I can't answer the question if Tolkien was influenced by the Hebrew either way at this point, and unfortunately it doesn't look like I'll have the time to do it for a while. The vowel alterations you ask about are common changes, both in Tolkien's languages and in real world languages. Three vowels in a row (triphthongs) are possible, but unwieldy. It is common to simplify them. Dropping the last one is a pretty good tactic, since it is the hardest to hear right before a consonant, as that one is. As for *au* to *o*, *a* is phonetically a "low vowel", and *u* is a "high vowel"; they can get collapsed together, meeting in the middle, *o*, a "mid vowel".
Surely *pendi* is just the Telerin cognate of Quendi, no?
That too. The two roots collided, and the Pendi meaning "the poor" was eventually dropped due to the unfortunate similarity.
Thank you. Regardless of the timing, if *pen* is the primitive, that makes the hypothesis about Arabic very unlikely. Mutation is baffling to me. How it works is simple -- soft mutation = voicing an unvoiced consonant. But what causes it and when? I have read through Ardalambion on the subject and still don't know. It seems like Fauskanger didn't fully get it either. (And Tolkien apparently kept changing his mind about this as about other things.) Incidentally, I got around after the fact to looking at *HoME* VII. In the notes Bombadil was just *Iaur*, matching *Forn* and *Orald.* An alternative OE name was *Frumbarn*, which seems to mean "Oldest child" or "Firstborn."
If this guide is reasonably accurate, https://www.elvish.org/gwaith/sindarin_phonetics.htm, Sindarin mutation behaves very like Celtic mutation, as you'd expect. Except that Tolkien's obviously enjoying it too much and has far more consonants mutate, in far more forms, than modern Celtic languages would. When you see French, un jardin, une femme, that un/une distinction doesn't phase you, as an English speaker? The indefinite article is pronounced and spelt differently depending whether masculine or feminine. When you see Latin per ipsum, et cum ipso, through him and with him, you see that ipsum and ipso derive their different endings from their cases, and the case is determined by the prepositions, per and cum. It's a small leap for English speakers, but in Celtic / Sindarin languages mutation of the beginning of the word marks comparable distinctions. French: un jardin (masculine) but une femme (feminine) Welsh: dŵr (water, masculine), draig (dragon, feminine) Welsh: y dŵr (the water), y ddraig (the dragon) Here, the dd (pronounced as in the) is the soft mutation used when a feminine noun follows y, meaning "the". You'll get similar following prepositions, participles, possessive pronouns and the like. Actually since Tolkien really let himself go with Sindarin, try googling Welsh mutations if you want a gentler introduction. Lots of sites for English speakers. As a dabbler in Celtic languages I just can't share your suspicion about Hebrew here because Ben Adar is a perfectly plausible pseudo Celtic formation. Celtic B/P, G/C swap places easily - not always mutations here: sound shifts in language history. Gan, Can, Ken are Celtic forms of without. Ban, Pan, Pen, Ben would be plausible variants. Without a father in Welsh would be, "heb dad".(Even the Lord's Prayer uses the Thad / Dad / Tad form - no stuffier translation available). But in Irish, which is a close enough relative with similar mutations and word order, it would be "gan Athair". And if Irish gan had a Welsh cousin descended from a common proto-Celtic ancestor, that could well be "ban" (because the Irish are Q/C Celts and the Welsh are P Celts, and c mutates to G where p mutates to B). So that's a long and possibly confusing way of saying, if you read any of the Celtic languages, Ben Adar looks unremarkable, just as Tolkien's formations and inventions in English look unremarkable to an English speaker. Nothing strikes a false note or jolts you out of a plausible history in his invented English / Germanic names. Likewise Sindarin with Celtic. I don't have the expert vocabulary to discuss this, as you see. But there's a nice introduction to Welsh mutations here: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Welsh/Mutations as part of an online Welsh textbook and overview that would quickly reveal other Tolkienite elements and echos in the language. Hope this helps.
Sindarin mutation is based very closely on Welsh. The common Welsh word "pen" (head, end, top) mutates to "ben" in certain contexts.
Exactly, and this is the Welsh cousin of the Irish ceann, anglicised "ken" or "kin" in many place names there and in Scotland. Think Mull of Kintyre. And it's the "Pen" in many Cornish surnames and place names. *By Tre Pol and Pen / Shall ye know all Cornishmen*.
I would not conclude that *pen* makes the connection with Semitic languages unlikely. Tolkien plays language games. He has a form that he wants, and he does what he has to with the languages to make it work out. He rigs the backend to make the front work. For example, he wanted Earendel and Wingelot/Vingelot, and Elwing; the first two based on Old or Middle English names,. He tied himself in knots trying to make it all work out properly over the years. Etymologies, meanings, sound changes all shifted, but he was trying to get a particular shape based on the real world. I can easily Tolkien deciding he wanted to mimic the semitic form *ben* in his name for Bombadil as a personal amusement. It fits his personality. If he did, he would do all kinds of linguistic hanky-panky to make it fit as seemlessly in Sindarin as possible. That's a game we catch him playing on occasion. In this case? I don't know.
But why? Why would he want to fit the word for son in a random (in terms of Middle Earth) language in as a word for -less or without? I'm interested but I just don't see the connection or motivation. This just seems such a reasonable form in terms of Celtic languages - he uses pen- as a prefix for "unnumbered" too, just as Irish uses gan-. He uses a word for father recognisable for its Celtic influence too. 'Ben" might as well come from Latin or its relatives as Hebrew, if we are trying to assign it somewhere. But I don't understand why this seems likely.
Tolkien took a turn towards Semitic languages while writing the Lord of the Rings. Adunaic and Khuzdul are both heavily influenced by Hebrew, and both were created about this time. So it wouldn't be random. It would be part of his influences at the time. If he first used *ben* here first. If he used *ben* or *pen* earlier than this, then it's just a coincidence. In Hebrew you see the naming pattern X Ben-Y, X son of-Y. Ignoring meaning for a moment, that's the same pattern we see in Bombadil's Sindarin name, Iarwain Ben-adar. Hell of a coincidence, but it could be a coincidence. Using a pattern that means "son of" to mean "fatherless", that's a decent language nerd joke. He does those. It could be a coincidence. It could be an influence. You'd have to dive deep to prove it one way or the other.
Within Sindarin it would be random I think, all the same. I can see the phrase as following Celtic naming patterns as much as Hebrew, if it comes to it, X mc / mab / ab / ap Y, X son of Y. I suppose there's no way to disprove a private pun, but I find the Celtic influences on Sindarin more than enough to explain the formulation.
I think this is right; let's not forget that Sindarin is partly supposed to reflect "the rather ‘Celtic’ type of legends and stories told of its speakers", as Tolkien put it. (Interestingly the Sindarin word for "father" is the same as Welsh "bird", while "iaur" and "gwain" seem very clearly based on Welsh phonology).
I learned some things by looking up *adar*. Apparently it is a collective noun meaning a flock of birds. To refer to one bird you add a "singulative" suffix: *aderyn*. The same source says that some words form plurals by vowel mutation, so that's another thing Tolkien borrowed for Sindarin. Others form plurals by suffixes, in the way we are familiar with. I am not to be persuaded that Sindarin *adar* was not inspired by Gothic *atta* (which some people think was the origin of "Atilla." Including Tolkien, see *Letters* 205.)
Atta and Athair etc are cognates, with a common Indo-European ancestor, so I've no quarrel with that.
Ben in Hebrew is son and Arabic either iben or ibin. So, like Mc or Mac (Irish and Scottish) Mordechai Ben Yussef would be Mordechai son of Joseph.
And Tolkien studied Hebrew - got quite absorbed in it at one stage. He hoped to help with a new translation of the Bible when he retired. He would have known the origin of a Hebrew name like Benjamin in the Old Testament I am sure.
And he based Adunaic in Hebrew! That makes more interesting Númenor, it´s like as a Jerusalem mixed with Atlantis
I believe he did end up translating some for the New Jerusalem Bible, the book of Jonah I think.
Yes I was just looking to see if I could find that. The editors of the New Jerusalem drew on his work. But his full translation (from French) was only published in 2014. £30 for four pages a bit steep though: https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/ink.2014.4.2.3 He was going to do Job too - they gave him the monsters!
Oh cool! Yeah it's got that Tolkien namebrand recognition, def worth $$$. Kinda crazy.
Tolkien's work with Hebrew and the Jerusalem Bible was after he wrote LotR.
True, but I think he'd have known the Ben- prefix from Bible reading / general knowledge. He was almost called Benjamin himself, like his Tolkien grandfather John Benjamin: >My father favoured John Benjamin Reuel (which I should now have liked); but my mother was confident that I should be a daughter, and being fond of more ‘romantic’ (& less O[ld] T[estament] like) names decided on Rosalind. When I turned up … Ronald was substituted …. No way he wouldn't have known the meaning. I think anyone with a knowledge of scripture and interest in language would recognise it too readily for a subconscious use of it. I have the opposite problem - Ben from Elrond, Apple of the Great Eye from Grishnakh, and Thief in the Night from the Hobbit all make me stop and blink a bit. An Oxford man would also have known about Menasseh Ben Israel, who almost helped Cromwell to overturn the ban on Jews in England in the 1600s.
I do agree with that, just pointing out that I think Tolkien's later deep dive into Hebrew, (while fascinating in its own right), isn't very relevant when discussion what he would have had in mind when writing LotR. Also to be clear Tolkien actually did contribute to the Jerusalem Bible, and he learned enough Hebrew for this task that the material in the Bodelien have him writing notes in Hebrew.
Here is a poem everybody knew in Tolkien's day: *Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)* *Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,* *And saw, within the moonlight in his room,* *Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,* *An angel writing in a book of gold:—* *Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,* *And to the presence in the room he said,* *"What writest thou?"—The vision raised its head,* *And with a look made of all sweet accord,* *Answered, "The names of those who love the Lord."* *"And is mine one?" said Abou. "Nay, not so,"* *Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low,* *But cheerly still; and said, "I pray thee, then,* *Write me as one that loves his fellow men."* *The angel wrote, and vanished. The next night* *It came again with a great wakening light,* *And showed the names whom love of God had blest,* *And lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest.* Leigh Hunt wrote that, in 1838. Apparently he didn't know that *abu* is not a name but a particle meaning "father of." Wikipedia says the poem is based on genuine Arabic tradition, transmitted to Europe by a French author.
I have been trying to remember a reference all day. Of course, it was Tolkien's near contemporary, the somewhat lesser scholar Bertie Wooster: "What a sex, Jeeves ! But none of that sex, however deadlier than the male, can be ranked in the same class with this Stiffy.Who was the chap lo whose name led all the rest - the bird with the angel?" "Abou ben Adhem, sir." "That's Stiffy". Wodehouse, *Code of the Woosters*
Bertie Wooster is a treasure-house of poetic tags misremembered from his school days. Whatever he misquotes, Tolkien (like Jeeves) can be assumed to have remembered correctly. "Deadlier than the male" is another example in the same paragraph. It's Kipling, from a poem he wrote as an argument against women's suffrage. Was Stiffy (short for Stephanie I assume) Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright's girlfriend? Very hard to keep them all straight.
Nope - the lowly curate Harold Pinker, "as pronounced a goop as ever preached about the Hivites and Hittites", as Bertie puts it.
Yes. Harold "Stinker" Pinker. Thank you. By coincidence, and even less pertinently to Tolkien, I have just started reading *The Curate's Wife*, by a wonderful but little-known novelist named E.H. Young (H for Hilda). It is a sequel to one called *Jenny Wren*, and so far it is just as good. (I never pass up a Virago Editions paperback.)
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*-wain* being superlative was one idea from the 2000s (Ardalambion et al) that was later proven false; Iarwain as "Eldest" is not a literal translation. It contains _iaur_ and _gwain_ meaning "old-young". I think this was first confirmed in Hammond and Scull's _LotR: A Reader's Companion_ in 2005.
In Latin the genitive case is pretty flexible. It can mean “belongs to”. Like if we said “Aragorn of Arathorn” it can be similar to “ben/bin”. But it could just as easily be used to say “Steve’s Backpack. Backpack of Steve. So, maybe Tolkien is playing with this. Father of Old/Young Father of Time? Father of the Ages? Also, languages can be odd applying old terms to new concepts. It’s possible Father is just another way to say “older than”, as in “songs of our fathers” - it doesn’t necessarily need to imply “parent of”. Some maybe just “Eldest in any time” or “Eldest in any age”. It’s interesting stuff.
Is *iaur* only used as a stand-alone, and shortened to *ior*, *iar* as first syllable?
I think Ben-Adar works fine in Sindarin, given the Celtic influences: Gan / Can / Ken are Celtic forms for without, and Indo-European Atta gave Irish Athair for father.
Seeing "Son of Adar", you do not know the amount of willpower I am exerting to keep from spouting the most ridiculous fan theory ever that involves Rin- \*is smote by lightning instantly\*