"At that old Ghân made a curious gurgling noise, and it seemed that he was laughing."
The Return of the King V 5
The Ride of the Rohirrim
A shortened form of Ghân-buri-Ghân,2 the name of the headman of the Wild Men who inhabited the Drúadan Forest in Anórien. Ghân's people had dwelt in the woods around the hill of Eilenach for millennia, living secret lives among the trees and interacting little3 with the peoples around them.
Ghân himself is described as being short of stature and stocky of build. His face was flat and his eyes dark, and his beard was light. He named himself the great headman of the forest, which we might take to mean that he was the leader of all the Drúedain who lived under the trees. Though his speech in the Common Tongue (which was alien to his people) was halting, he evidently had a quick and perceptive mind.
Ghân was the leader of his people during the closing years of the Third Age, and on 13 March III 3019 a force of strangers entered his forest. These were the Rohirrim, riding eastward to join the defence of Minas Tirith. Ghân had no alliance with Men of this kind, and indeed his Wild Men had been hunted by them as if they were animals, but he also had a deep-rooted hatred for Orcs. His people had already observed that, eastward beyond the forest, a force of enemies awaited the Rohirrim and blocked their path. Knowing of a secret way through the White Mountains, Ghân agreed to lead Théoden and his Riders that way, and thus escape the force awaiting them on the road. So the Rohirrim were able to travel the Stonewain Valley and arrive in time to join the Battle of the Pelennor Fields.
Ghân's actions did not go unrewarded. All he had asked from Théoden in return for his aid was that his people should be left alone, and no longer hunted, but he gained more than this. After Gondor's victory in the War of the Ring, the new King Elessar came to the Drúadan Forest. He granted the forest to Ghân and his people in perpetuity, and banned all other Men from entering it. As was the nature of his secretive people, Ghân himself did not appear in person to receive this great gift, but the sound of the drums of his Wild Men was heard in the hills.
Notes
1 |
Ghân's name came from the mysterious language of the Drúedain, and so a definite interpretation is not possible. It does however bear a striking resemblance to an Elvish root word for 'Man', Ʒan-, which opens the possibility that the Drúedain learned their speech originally from the Elves. That is entirely plausible (we know that other Mannish languages were influenced by Elvish), but on the other hand the resemblance may be entirely coincidental.
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2 |
The naming conventions of the Drúedain are not explained, but the shortened form Ghân is probably the headman's personal name, with the extended Ghân-buri-Ghân representing some kind of surname or title. Indeed, the capitalisation of the full name implies that it might be taken as a patronymic, with the meaning 'Ghân son of Ghân'.
The element ghan seems to be common among the names of these people (at least, our only other name for a Drúadan, from millennia before Ghân's time, was Aghan), so perhaps it was not unusual among them for a father and son to share a name. Given how little we know about the language of this people, however, it is quite possible that Ghân's full name might have carried some entirely different meaning.
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3 |
From the glimpses we have of the Wild Men of Drúadan Forest, it seems that interactions with outsiders were exceptionally rare. It's notable, however, that Ghân could speak and understand the Common Tongue to some extent, which implies that he (or at least some of his people) had a degree of contact with the outside world.
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- Updated 1 March 2025
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