“Rings of Power” season 2 is without a doubt the nerdiest show on TV. It relishes translating absurdly small details from Tolkien’s Legendarium to the screen, exploring not only the origin of some of the biggest moments in the history of Middle-earth, but also making sure to remember the weird, silly, and poetic aspects of the source material like Tom Bombadil, Old Man Willow, or the existence of orc babies.
Even when actually exploring the origin of items like the rings or Sauron fooling Celebrimbor with his Halbrand disguise (and then his Annatar disguise), the show makes sure to provide its own spin on the source material while still honoring the essence of the mythos. Take Mordor, which gets its own origin story in season 1 of the show — an origin story that was not what fans expected, but still resulted in the best episode of that season. The transformation of the Southlands into Mordor was swift and spectacular, but arguably swifter and more surprising is how quickly the peoples of Middle-earth have been to adopt the new name of that region.
Though the show’s timeline is vague at best, it seems unlikely that the battle for the Southlands and the eruption of Mount Doom happened much longer than a couple of weeks before the start of season 2. And yet, in episode 5 of the new season, we hear the name “Mordor” uttered as far away as Lindon. Elrond mentions it when talking to Gil-galad about an attack on Adar’s orcs, and also by another elf who tells the High King that the real enemy is not in Eregion but in Mordor (which is wrong). How did the name expand, and more importantly, who came up with it?
The meaning of Mordor
We don’t hear the name “Mordor” in the first season. Instead, after the eruption of Mount Doom, orcs celebrate by chanting “Udûn,” the name of the valley that protects Sauron’s fortress of Barad-dûr. The closest we get to actually hearing the name Mordor is when Waldreg hails Adar as Lord of the Southlands, which prompts Adar to claim that the Southlands no longer exist. But when he is about to name his new realm, an onscreen text tag turns “Southlands” to “Mordor.”
Then there’s Galadriel. Earlier in the same episode, as Galadriel guides Theo through the desolation that was the Southlands, she says that the orcs needed to destroy the lands in order to build their own home, “their Shadow Land.” The word “Mordor” is literally Sindarin (Galadriel’s native elvish tongue) for “Shadow Land,” so it seems possible Galadriel herself coined the name. Mordor is what elves and humans call the dark lands Sauron occupies, it is not a name the orcs or Sauron came up with. (As for dwarves, they call it “Nargûn.”)
The problem with this is that we do see Adar’s forces (or at least Waldreg) use the name Mordor in the first episode of season 2 as he welcomes new prisoners. It seems strange that Adar, a guy so dedicated to the rights of his children that he refuses the elvish label orc and instead refers to himself as “uruk,” would adopt an elvish name for his home.
Even stranger, Sauron also uses it when in disguise as Halbrand in the season 2 premiere, swearing his allegiance to “The Lord of Mordor.” Why would Sauron, the man hellbent on conquering if not annihilating the elves, adopt an elvish name for his future home? How fast did the word spread that Galadriel called this place the Shadow Land? Apparently the biggest force on Middle-earth is the elves’ PR company.
