Editing Dwarves in Middle-earth (section)

== Arte<!--British English-->facts ==
{{anchor|Telchar}}

=== Mining, masonry, and metalwork ===

{{further|Named weapons in Middle-earth}}

As creations of Aulë, they are attracted to the substances of Arda. They mine and work precious metals throughout the mountains of Middle-earth. They are unrivalled in smithing, crafting, metalworking, and masonry, even among the [[Elf (Middle-earth)|Elves]]. The Dwarf-smith Telchar is the greatest in renown.<ref group=T>{{harvnb|Tolkien|1977|loc=ch. 2 "Of Aulë and Yavanna"}}</ref> They build immense halls under mountains for their cities. They build many famed halls including the [[Menegroth]], [[Khazad-dûm]], and [[Erebor]].<ref name="Of the Sindar" group=T>{{harvnb|Tolkien|1977|loc=ch. 10 "Of the Sindar"}}</ref> Among the many treasures they forge are the [[Named weapons in Middle-earth|named weapons]] [[Narsil]], the sword of [[Elendil]], the [[Dragon-helm of Dor-lómin]] and the necklace Nauglamír, the most prized treasure in [[Nargothrond]] and the most famed Dwarven work of the Elder Days.<ref group=T>{{harvnb|Tolkien|1977|loc=ch. 22 "Of the Ruin of Doriath"}}</ref> In ''The Hobbit'', Thorin gives Bilbo a [[Mithril]] coat of linked rings of [[Mail armour|mail]].<ref group=T>{{harvnb|Tolkien|1937|loc=ch. 13, "Not at Home"}}</ref>

=== Language and names ===

{{Main|Khuzdul|Cirth}}

[[File:Linguistic Map of Middle-Earth.svg|thumb|upright=1.35|Tolkien invented parts of [[Middle-earth]] to resolve the linguistic puzzle he had accidentally created by using different European languages for those of peoples in his legendarium.<ref name="Shippey">{{cite book |last=Shippey |first=Thomas |author-link=Thomas Shippey |title=[[The Road to Middle-Earth]] |date=1982 |publisher=[[Grafton (publisher)|Grafton]] (HarperCollins) |location=New York City |isbn=0261102753 |pages=131–133}}</ref><ref name="Letters Languages" group=T>{{harvnb|Carpenter|2023|loc=#144, to [[Naomi Mitchison]], 25 April 1954 }}</ref>]]

In [[Sindarin]] (Grey-elvish) the Dwarves are called ''Naugrim'' ("Stunted People"), ''Gonnhirrim'' ("Stone-lords"), and ''Dornhoth'' ("Thrawn Folk"), and ''Hadhodrim''. In [[Quenya]] they are the ''Casári''. The Dwarves call themselves ''Khazâd'' in their own language, [[Khuzdul]].<ref name="On Translation" group=T>{{harvnb|Tolkien|1955|loc=''Appendix F'', "On Translation"}}</ref> [[Khuzdul]] is created for them by Aulë, rather than being descended from an Elvish language, as most of the languages of [[Man (Middle-earth)|Men]] are. They write it using [[Cirth]] [[rune]]s, a writing system originally created by Elves in Beleriand to write Sindarin, and later more fully developed by Daeron, an Elf of Doriath. The Cirth runes are adapted by Dwarves for writing Khuzdul.<ref>{{cite book |last=Noel |first=Ruth S. |title=The Languages of Tolkien's Middle-earth |publisher=[[Houghton Mifflin Harcourt|Houghton Mifflin]] |location=Boston, Massachusetts |year=1980 |isbn=978-0395291306 |at=Part 1, ch. 5, "The Languages of Rhovanion", pp. 30–34}}</ref> The Dwarves keep their language secret and do not normally teach it to others, so they learn both [[Quenya]] and [[Sindarin]] to communicate with the Elves, especially the [[Noldor]] and [[Sindar]]. By the [[Third Age]] the Dwarves are estranged from the Elves and no longer routinely learn their language. Instead, they mostly use the [[Westron]] (Common Speech), a Mannish tongue, in communicating with other races.<ref name="Of the Sindar" group=T/><ref name="Of Other Races" group=T>{{harvnb|Tolkien|1955|loc=''Appendix F'', "Of Other Races"}}</ref>

Each Dwarf has two personal names, a secret, "inner" name in Khuzdul, which is used only among other Dwarves and is never revealed to outsiders, and a public, "outer" name for use with other races, taken from the language of the people amongst whom the Dwarf lives. For example, the Dwarves of Moria and the Lonely Mountain use outer names taken from the language of the Men of the north where they lived.<ref name="On Translation" group=T/>

In reality, Tolkien took the names of 12 of the 13 dwarves – excluding [[Balin (Middle-earth)|Balin]] – that he used in ''The Hobbit'' from the Old Norse ''Völuspá'', long before the idea of Khuzdul arose.<ref name="Evans 2013 (Drout)"/><ref>{{harvnb|Rateliff|2007|loc=Volume 2 ''Return to Bag-End'', Appendix 3}}</ref> When he came to write ''The Lord of the Rings'', in order to explain why the Dwarves had Norse names, he created an elaborate fiction that many of the languages used in the book were "translated" into real-life languages for the benefit of the reader, roughly retaining the relationships of the languages among themselves. Thus, Westron was translated into English, the related but more archaic language of the Rohirrim was translated into Anglo-Saxon ([[Old English]]), and the even more distantly related language of Dale was translated into Norse. It is possible that the problem of explaining the Dwarves' Norse names was the origin of the entire structure of the Mannish languages in Middle-earth along with the fiction of "translation".<ref>{{harvnb|Tolkien|1996|loc=p.71}}</ref>

=== Calendar ===

Tolkien's only mention of the Dwarves' calendar is in ''[[The Hobbit]]'', regarding the "dwarves' New Year" (''[[Durin]]'s Day''), which occurs on the day of the last new moon of autumn.<ref group=T>{{harvnb|Tolkien|1937|loc=ch. 3 "A Short Rest"}}</ref> However, in his first drafts of the book, Durin's Day was the ''first'' new moon of autumn. After he had finished writing the book, Tolkien went back and changed all occurrences of the date to the last new moon, more in keeping with the real-world [[Celtic calendar]], but overlooked one mention in Chapter IV, which still named the date as the first new moon.<ref group=T>{{harvnb|Tolkien|1937|loc=ch. 4 "Over Hill and Under Hill"}}: "They had thought of coming to the secret door in the Lonely Mountain, perhaps that very next first moon of Autumn 'and perhaps it will be Durin's Day' they had said."</ref> Tolkien never noticed this inconsistency, and it was not corrected until the 1995 edition of the book.<ref>{{harvnb|Rateliff|2007|loc=Volume 1 ''Mr. Baggins'', p.124}}</ref> The astronomer [[Bradley E. Schaefer]] has analysed the astronomical determinants of Durin's Day. He concluded that – as with many real-world [[lunar calendar]]s – the date of Durin's Day is observational, dependent on the first visible crescent moon.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Schaefer |first=Bradley E. |author-link=Bradley E. Schaefer |title=The Hobbit and Durin's Day |journal=The Griffith Observer |volume=58 |issue=11 |year=1994 |publisher=[[Griffith Observatory]] |location=Los Angeles, California |pages=12–17}}</ref>