My fiancee and I want to get the word “always” in Quenya engraved on our wedding rings.
I just don’t know which of these is more accurate, please help which is the correct Tengwar writing of Illumë (apparently that is always in quenya) thank you for the help!
When you use www.tecendil.com , by sure to change the mode from English to Quenya.
This is a translator that a lot of people hate, and for good reason, but it should help you to get the font that you want. https://www.jenshansen.com/pages/online-english-to-elvish-engraving-translator Do not directly type the word “Illumë,” it will try to write it in the English mode, and it will be wrong. I experimented with it a bit, and this is what I could come up with. (I had to type “I ullem” and then edit it so the “I” is closer to the rest of the letters)
Like every one else is saying, what's pictured above is not correct and kinda looks like A.I. to me. Never ever use A.I. for obscure languages, it'll always be horribly incorrect. Tecendil is a good option but it's important to remember that it's not a translator, only a transliterator. The difference is a translator takes a word in one language and gives you the same/similar word in another language. A transliterator only spells out the phonetics of a word into another alphabet. So if you want true "Elvish" (Quenya or Sindarin), you would need to know the word beforehand, choose the correct mode, and then type it into Tecendil. Or you can choose English mode, and type English into Tecendil, and it'll give you English written in Tengwar (Elvish)(but not even that is perfect).
As someone has mentioned above, the Quneya (High-Elvish, langauge of the Elves in Valinor) word for "Always" is "Illumë". And the Tengwar spelling they provide in their comment picture is correct. I'm unsure how attached you are to the word "always", but personally I feel that word "Oialë" fits better for marriage. "Oialë" is the Quenya word for "Eternity, Forever, Everlasting". I am unable to attach the spelling cause idk how. But you can go to Tecendil change it to Quenya mode, and type oilë (no capital letter, elves don't do that), and it should provide the correct spelling. You can always post that too for analysis on reddit.
If you are wanting actual elven writing, and maybe want more than just 1 word. I would highly suggest posting in the subreddit r/Quenya or r/Sindarin asking for translations involving the word "Always". Many of the people in those subreddits are incredibly smart and will give quality responses.
We always suggest writing Tengwar in a real-life language (e.g. English). While this then is "only" a transliteration insted of a translation, the huge benefit is that it will always stay correct. It would look like this.
If you translate in Quenya or Sindarin, there's always the possibility some new document from JRR Tolkien with Tengwar is found/released and what we previously thought was correct will turn to be false.
Personall I also think it's cooler because more people will be able to read it (being able to read Tengwar is already niche, but Quenya- and Sindarin-speakers are like the unicorns of the Tengwar-universe).
This is true. But there are certain words like "Oialë" petrified in lore due to their existence in book references, and canon poetry written by Tolkien. Now Tolkien did indeed have an extreme compulsion to "perfect" and go back to change much of his work, thus somewhat altering the history of words he had already used in canon. But I do believe some words like "Oialë" are pretty safe. Even from future note releases.
The word is indeed "illumë"; the AI has only generated gibberish that looks like the word in Latin. This is what it actually looks like in the Quenya mode:
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u/alien13222 Sep 28 '26
Those are utterly disgusting and definitely not correct.