-o, a genitive ending here occurring thrice, in the words Eruo God’s, Eruanno of grace and mónalyo of thy womb (nominative forms Eru, #Eruanna, #mónalya – the latter two examples confirm that when it is added to a word ending in -a, the genitive suffix -o displaces this final vowel; cf. Vardo, Calaciryo as the genitive of Varda, Calacirya in Namárië). According to WJ:368, this genitive ending is to be referred to the "ancient adverbial element" ho, the basic meaning of which seems to be from (the point of view being outside "the thing, place, or group [left]"; cf. the entry 3O from, away, from among, out of in the Etymologies, LR:360). The Quenya ending is said to descend from Primitive Quendian -hô, an enclitic suffixed to noun stems; this position was "the usual place for the simpler prepositional elements in PQ" (WJ:368). This -hô produced Common Eldarin -ô, "since medial h was very early lost without trace in CE", and with the shortening of the long final vowels, the Quenya genitive ending -o arose. As explained by Tolkien in WJ:368-369, this genitive properly refers to point of origin more than "ownership" (for the latter, good Quenya would rather use the possessive-adjectival case in -va). It is often useful to bear in mind that the ending -o descends from an element meaning from, for sometimes this meaning can still be discerned in the use of the genitive in Quenya. In a phrase like i yáve mónalyo, the fruit of thy womb, the idea is obviously not that the womb somehow owns the "fruit", but that the "fruit" proceeded from the womb. (Cf. also the "ablativic" use of the genitive in the word Oiolossëo from Mount Everwhite in Namárië, though for from Quenya would normally use the regular ablative in -llo; see ulcullo).
ontaril, noun mother or more literally begetter, not previously attested but made up from familiar elements. In the Etymologies, a verb onta- beget is derived from the stem ono- of similar meaning (LR:379; this is evidently a stem-vowel prefixed variant of nô, which stem is also defined beget: LR:378). Onta- would represent primitive *ontâ- or *onotâ-; this is one of the cases where the ending -tâ functions only as a verb-former and adds nothing to the meaning of the stem. Two derived agental nouns are actually listed in the Etymologies, ontaro begetter, parent and a corresponding feminine form ontare (the fact that the latter is said to be feminine evidently implies that ontaro is masculine; the endings -o and -e are masculine/feminine counterparts in Quenya). Yet in his Hail Mary translation Tolkien did not use ontare, but an alternative feminine form ontaril. The feminine ending -il is attested in only a few other Quenya words: amil mother derived from a stem am1- (LR:348 – mamil in UT:191 is perhaps a hypocoristic variant) and tavaril female dryad from the stem táwar- (LR:391). Cf. also Old Noldorin khíril lady (LR:364 s.v. kher-). The simplest agental form in -r is perhaps not gender-specific: The primitive endings -ro and -re (cf. WJ:371 regarding the former) were masculine and feminine, respectively, but they would have merged as -r already in Common Eldarin, since final short -o and -e were lost very early. However, the primitive endings also appeared in long variants -rô and -rê, and where they occurred the final vowel indicating gender would still be present in Quenya, though now short: Hence in the Etymologies the words for begetter/parent are ontaro m. and ontare f. Even so, we have relatively few examples of nouns including the long masculine ending -ro (all of them in the Etymologies), and the word ontare itself seems to be the sole example of the feminine ending -re. It may be that Tolkien decided to drop these endings and rather assume that the primitive personal/agental endings -ro (m.) and -re (f.) had merged as -r in Quenya, with no indication of sex; if it is desirable to express gender, one must add a secondary ending to -r, like masc. -on or fem. -il. (Cf. masc. tavaron and fem. tavaril as the words for dryad in LR:391 s.v. táwar-.) Hence we have ontaril as the word for begetter, mother in the text before us. – The plural gender-neutral word parents, ontari (evidently misread as "ontani" in LR:379) occurred in an early version of Treebeard’s greeting to Celeborn and Galadriel, but it was changed to nostari as in the published LotR, Tolkien later noting that nosta- means beget. (SD:73; in earlier "Qenya", this verb meant give birth instead; see LT1:272 or QL:66.) This change was made as LotR was being finished, suggesting that the Hail Mary translation predates this time – or we would perhaps have seen *nostaril instead of ontaril. However, it should be noted that the stem ono- beget, give birth to was still valid in the post-LotR period, as is evident from WJ:413 reproducing a source dating from ca. 1960. Even so, the use of the word ontaril may provide a hint that our text was written about the time Tolkien was finishing LotR (say, after the two first volumes had been published, but before he made some final, minute revisions in the last volume – like changing ontari to nostari as recorded in SD:73).
quanta, adjective full. This word is attested at all stages of Tolkien’s long evolution of Quenya; it occurs both in the Qenya Lexicon of 1915 (QL:78 s.v. qntn or qata), in the Etymologies of the mid-thirties (LR:366 s.v. kwat-, which was an added entry) and in such a post-LotR source as the essay Quendi and Eldar of ca. 1960 (in the phrase quanta sarme "full writing", VT39:8). In the two first sources, the spelling used is of course qanta. The stem kwat- from which this adjective was derived in the Etymologies was not further explained or even defined there. However, in Quendi and Eldar Tolkien shed more light on this root (WJ:392). He "theorized" that it had originally occurred in a simpler form kwa: "This stem evidently referred to completion. As such it survives as an element in many of the Eldarin words for whole, total, all, etc. But it also appears in the form *kwan, and cannot well be separated from the verb stem *kwata, Q[uenya] quat- fill." The adjective quanta full "cannot well be separated" either, and this verbal stem kwata, extension of kwa, is clearly the same stem as kwat- in the Etymologies (another case of slightly inconsistent representation of stems; see Eruo). If kwat(a) is primarily a verbal stem fill, it could have a primitive past participle *kwatnâ filled (-nâ being a primitive past participle ending; see aistana). If quanta full is to be referred to *kwatnâ filled, this old past participle may then have developed into an adjective. For a probable parallel case, cf. Quenya melda beloved, dear; the glosses make it clear that this is to be taken as an adjective. However, the primitive form Tolkien probably meant to be *melnâ, which would simply be the past participle loved, formed from the stem mel- love (as friend) (LR:372). *Kwatnâ may have metathesized to *kwantâ at an early stage; cf. another example of the ending -nâ being added to a stem ending in a voiceless stop: From stak- split, insert come both stankâ and staknâ, these primitive forms being cited as the sources of the Quenya adjective (and/or noun?) sanka cleft, split (LR:388). Despite staknâ being mentioned last, it may be that this is the oldest form, early turning into stankâ; Quenya sanka clearly descends from the latter form. The immediate ancestor of quanta must likewise have been *kwantâ. However, it is eminently possible that this is also to be taken as the ulterior form, not just as a metathesized variant of *kwatnâ. There are other examples of adjectives being derived by means of nasal infixion and the suffixing of -â, such as primitive tungâ taut, tight vs. the stem tug- (LR:394; it is of course possible that stankâ above is meant to be a similar formation rather than a metathesized form of staknâ). Our favorite theory must probably be that *kwantâ is an adjective full derived from kwat- by means of the same devices; in such a case we shall not have to postulate a semantic development from past participle to adjective (filled > full).