Rôs

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This content is considered pre-canon. While the subject of this article is based on official information, it was replaced or emended in later stages of the legendarium.

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Rôs was a region in the north-west of the Great Lands, near Leithian, in earlier versions of J.R.R. Tolkien's legendarium.

History

Against the will of the Valar, the Elves of Tol Eressëa set out on the "First Faring Forth", an expedition to help their kin in the Great Lands in the war against Melko and his army of Goblins, Nauglath, and wicked Men. However, these Elves were defeated in the Battle of Rôs, and those that remained in the Great Lands started to relocate to Leithian in large numbers, because Ing, king of the region, was an Elf-friend; so they slowly departed Tol Eressëa.

When Leithian became an island, Rôs became a promontory, and the Gnomes that lived there, having been separated from their kin in Leithian, possessed their own unique Gnomish dialect.

Etymology

The word Rôs means "the all-embracing, the surrounding" in Gnomish. Its equivalent in Early Quenya was Rása.

Background

According to Christopher Tolkien, Rôs was conceived as a mythical representation of Brittany, and its name could be related to the toponym Roos, probably meaning "moor, promontory", with its Welsh, Breton and Irish cognates being rhôs ("moor, heath, plain"), ros ("hillock") and ros ("promontory"), respectively. In fact, J.R.R. Tolkien originally had started the creation of the legendarium with the intent to build a proper British mythology. Thus, for the earlier versions of his myths, he drew largely from actual British history.