At the time they crossed the Blue Mountains in I 310, the People of Bëor had never encountered one of the High Elves. As they camped among the foothills on the western side of the Mountains, they were discovered by Finrod Felagund, son of Finarfin, who had dwelt in Valinor in the Light of the Trees. Bëor and his people were astonished by the Elf, thinking him at first to be one of the Valar.
Finrod stayed among these Men for a time and taught them, and they gave him a name in their own tongue: Nóm or Wisdom. To the Eldar as a people, and especially to the Noldor,1 they gave a name related to this, Nómin, meaning the Wise.
It's unclear whether this name passed into common use, or whether it was just used in the early days of Men in Beleriand. There's no direct reference of its use after the first encounter of Finrod and the Bëorians (though the fact that it was recorded in the Silmarillion shows that it was at least remembered as significant). There is perhaps an echo of the name from later ages: when Pippin encountered Elves for the first time in the journey out of the Shire, he referred to them as 'Wise People'. That's hardly conclusive, but it may be a faint memory of the first name used by Mortals of the Eldar, millennia beforehand.
Notes
1 |
The published Silmarillion simply says that the 'Wise' was a title given to the folk of Finrod (which might be taken to mean all Elves, or the Noldor alone, or merely Finrod's own people of Nargothrond). Based on earlier texts (specifically the Quenta in volume IV of The History of Middle-earth) the name appears to have been meant to refer to the Noldor (although, as Men had only just arrived in Beleriand at this time, their understanding of the distinctions involved must have been rudimentary at best). |
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