Merge proposal
What do you all think about the names "Ephel Brandir" and "Obel Halad"? It really seems to me that they are not two separate settlements, but rather that Obel Halad replaced Ephel Brandir in the writing. There are certain details about both of them that are contradictory if they are two settlements. One was the capital of Brethil and the other was the main settlement of Brethil. The Hall of the Chieftains was in Obel Halad, yet Brandir lived in Ephel Brandir. Both of these locations were also built atop Amon Obel and Christopher Tolkien literally described in a note that Obel Halad replaced Ephel Brandir as the main settlement of the Haladin and that "The Wanderings Of Hurin" was in its final form. However, if we ignore this and consider Ephel Brandir as Tolkien’s final conception, where do we draw the line at when considering Christopher Tolkien’s statements? I think that because he stated in the note that the Brethil part of "The Wanderings Of Hurin" was in its final form, we should consider the name Obel Halad over Ephel Brandir. There are a few more reasons why, but I do not want to make this proposal too long.
I believe that Ephel Brandir should be merged onto Obel Halad since the text that Obel Halad appears in is much more detailed than the texts that Ephel Brandir appears in.
https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Ephel_Brandir https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Obel_Halad
Dour1234 (talk) 23:27, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
Merge proposal II
Update to the above - While I think Obel Halad is the better name, I don’t care whether Ephel Brandir or Obel Halad ends up being the page-name. Perhaps it should be Ephel Brandir since it has a longer edit history? Perhaps it should be Obel Halad since The Wanderings of Húrin has more detail about it? Regardless of what the page-name ends up being, I now just believe that the two pages should be merged because they are both two names for the same location.Dour1234 (talk) 06:47, 24 June 2025 (UTC)
- I completely agree that they should be merged (and significantly expanded upon).
- I also agree that 'Obel Halad' is a better name even though 'Ephel Brandir' appears in the CoH - I simply think that it's weird that the main settlement of the Folk of Haleth should be named after a chieftain who ruled for only 4 years and wasn't even well liked or respected; 'Obel Halad' at least references the term Halad ('chieftain') in general. IvarTheBoneless (talk) 08:49, 24 June 2025 (UTC)
- While I also still prefer "Obel Halad" as I did in 2022, I don’t think it matters which is the page-name, as long as they are merged.Dour1234 (talk) 10:06, 24 June 2025 (UTC)
- I agree that the two pages should be merged. I prefer "Ephel Brandir" as the name of the page with the content and "Obel Halad" to be a redirect page that redirects to the "Ephel Brandir" page. The reason is that Christopher Tolkien chose to leave the name "Ephel Brandir" when he edited The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth and also included it in the index of both publications. I think that more readers of Tolkien Gateway will have access to S and UT than to books where "Obel Halad" is used. --Akhôrahil (talk) 07:28, 25 June 2025 (UTC)
- What's wrong with new readers stumbling upon a never-before seen name? We're here to educate (in practice if not in principle), whether we like it or not.
- I can only speak for myself, but back in mid-to-late-2000s, there was nothing as magical as opening a new link on TG and discovering something new that I had no idea about. Why shouldn't we expand the readers' horizons instead of shrinking them? IvarTheBoneless (talk) 11:45, 25 June 2025 (UTC)
- I completely agree with that view.Dour1234 (talk) 01:31, 1 July 2025 (UTC)
- I agree that the two pages should be merged. I prefer "Ephel Brandir" as the name of the page with the content and "Obel Halad" to be a redirect page that redirects to the "Ephel Brandir" page. The reason is that Christopher Tolkien chose to leave the name "Ephel Brandir" when he edited The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth and also included it in the index of both publications. I think that more readers of Tolkien Gateway will have access to S and UT than to books where "Obel Halad" is used. --Akhôrahil (talk) 07:28, 25 June 2025 (UTC)