Avari

Much of this article relates to the later versions of the legendarium, and as such may contain discrepancies with The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book, and The Road Goes Ever On: A Song Cycle. See LOTR:Canon for a discussion. This subject's portrayal in earlier or alternative versions is discussed in the In other versions section.

Avari
Other names	Evair (S.), Avamanyar (Q.), Dark-elves, Wild-elves, Hisildi (BoLT)
Dominions	Cuiviénen, Rhûn, Vales of Anduin, Mirkwood
Languages	Avarin, Sindarin
Lifespan	Biologically immortal
Distinctions	Often viewed the Eldar with jealousy and disdain and treated them with hostility
Height	Tall
Hair color	Black

The Avari were a branch of the Elves in Middle-earth, the group of Moriquendi ('Elves of Darkness') who never journeyed to Aman, and their descendants. They were also known as Avamanyar (Quenya for 'Those who would not go to Aman'), as opposed to the Amanyar, 'Those of Aman', and Úmanyar, 'Not of Aman'.

History

The sunderings of the Elves

When Oromë found that Elves had awakened in Cuiviénen, he invited them to come with him to Valinor. All the Minyar and most of the Tatyar and Nelyar were persuaded and followed Oromë into the west on the Great Journey. The remainder of the Tatyar and Nelyar remained suspicious of the Lords of the west, seeing them only in their wrath, or they simply refused to depart from their own lands, and spread gradually throughout the wide lands of Middle-earth. They were after known in Quenya, the language of the Eldar that eventually reached Valinor, by the name Avari, meaning "the Unwilling", because they refused the summons.

Having never come to Valinor, the Avari remained wild folk, dwellers of forests. Little is known of them, as they do not appear in any of the tales, save some references to Avari creeping in the south of Beleriand in the First Age. Some of them merged with the Nandor and Sindar in Eriador and the Vale of Anduin.

In The War of the Jewels, names of six tribes of Avari in their own languages are given, all being cognates of the Quenya term Quendi (the Speakers): Kindi, Cuind, Hwenti, Windan, Kinn-lai, Penni. They are the only certain Avarin words ever mentioned in the published Middle-earth material. It is speculated however that Dorwinion was an Avarin land, with Winion carrying the meaning "wine".

The Annals of Aman, given in Morgoth's Ring, suggest that Orcs descended from Avarin Elves captured and corrupted by Melkor, in mockery and in his envy of the Eldar in particular. Tolkien suggests elsewhere that this notion was, at least, a belief the Eldar held about the Orcs' origin. The matter is not ultimately clarified.

Eöl, one of the Teleri, was called the 'Dark Elf' for how he shunned the daylight, preferring to stay within the dark woods of Nan Elmoth and walk at nighttime. He was not, in fact, of Avarin lineage, being related to Thingol.

In other versions

In older versions of the legendarium, the name Avari was originally that of the later Eldar, then meaning "those that departed".

In other, relatively late writings, a brief idea was that the Avari did not come from the three clans, but from two other clans, led by Nurwë and Morwë. This idea was later dropped. In the final conception, the Elves were divided into three tribes.

Translations

Foreign Language	Translated name
Amharic	ዓቫሪ
Arabic	افاري
Armenian	Ավարի
Assamese	আভাৰী
Belarusian Cyrillic	Авары
Bengali	আভারী
Bhojpuri	अवरी
Bulgarian Cyrillic	Авари
Chinese (Hong Kong)	亞維瑞
Dogri	अवरी
Georgian	ავარები
Greek	Άβαρι
Gujarati	અવારી
Hebrew	אוארי
Hindi	अवारी
Japanese	アヴァリ
Kannada	ಅವರಿ
Kazakh	Аварі (Cyrillic) Avari (Latin)
Korean	아 바리
Kyrgyz Cyrillic	Авари
Macedonian Cyrillic	Авари
Marathi	आवरि
Mongolian Cyrillic	Авари
Nepalese	अवारी
Pashto	اواری
Persian	آواری
Punjabi	ਅਵਾਰੀ
Russian	Авари
Sanskrit	आवरि
Serbian	Авари (Cyrillic) Avari (Latin)
Sinhalese	ආවරි
Tajik Cyrillic	Авари
Tamil	அவரி
Telugu	అవారి
Thai	อวาริ
Ukrainian Cyrillic	Авари
Urdu	آواری
Yiddish	אַוואַרי