Warnings: Rated PG, actual footnotes and bibliographic references.

Ever since the movie of the book Fellowship of the Ring came out, there seem to be two popular ideas about Elves' sex lives. Either they are radiantly asexual, or they are all screwing each other madly, along with any dwarves, hobbits, and men who happen along. Whichever you prefer is usually based on how attractive you think Orlando Bloom is. Tolkien's history of Middle-Earth provides us with some information about elvish sex lives. I collected these originally as a fic-writing reference.

All this information includes its original text citation. An important source is the essay "Laws and Customs of the Eldar," published in the book Morgoth's Ring, History of Middle-Earth. This essay is referenced so often here that references to it are labeled with the acronym LACE. The LACE essay also discusses Elvish marriage and childbirth in detail, but that's outside the scope of this piece. The acronym HME refers to a book in the History of Middle-Earth series. A complete bibliography is included at the end.

It's helpful to consider that when Tolkien set up elvish social systems, he was in a way creating his own ideal people, based on his own values. It's also grounding to remember that this essay describes what Tolkien said about fantasy people in a fantasy world.

The good news is that elves like sex. "The union of love is indeed to them great delight and joy." (LACE) The bad news is that elves tend to lose interest in sex after they've had kids. "With the exercise of the power (of generation), the desire soon ceases, and the mind turns to other things…they have many other urges of body and of mind which their nature urges them to fulfil." They do look back happily on the sexually-active time in their lives, though, a period of one to several hundred years. (LACE) Also, "they are seldom swayed by the desires of the body only, but are by nature continent and steadfast." (LACE) Sorry.

A scholar of elvish languages, Helge Fauskanger (web site Ardalambion,) once said that "Somewhere there may be a sealed envelope containing a piece of paper with the Elvish designations of the genitals, furtively set down by Tolkien behind locked doors." Somebody has found the envelope. The publication of materials from Tolkien's archived 1920s wordlists of "Early Noldorin" has revealed that these designations do exist, at least in Quenya (thanks due to the astute Delalyra for noting that this information had become available.)

We begin with the essential parts; the Quenya term is in italics, and Tolkien's preferred English or Latin designation is in quotes. First, huch, "cunnus", and móna, "womb", are for the elf-women; vië, "membranum vir.", is for the elf-men. Everybody has hacca, "hams/buttocks", and everybody can get helda, that is, unclothed/naked. This accomplished, provided the elf-couple are appropriately married, it is time to attend to the marital duty of puhta, "coitus" (noun), though hopefully the pair's activity can be referred to with the verb púcë, a slightly gentler term that refers to that activity with a "poetic or archaic" meaning. (Parma Eldalamberion, Issue #13) All of these body parts and activities were given an erotic frisson by yérë, a noun which, based on the Quenya word-root YER, probably means "sexual desire". (Vinyar Tengwar, Issue #46).

Another term is Quenya nosta / Sindarin onna, beget. The source for this is Treebeard's farewell to Galadriel and Celeborn in "Many Partings," ROTK. This farewell includes the Quenya phrase "O vanimar, vanimalion nostari", translated in The End of the Third Age, in the chapter discussing Many Partings, footnote 16, as "fair ones begetters of fair ones." There is a related early Quenya noun, ontâro, meaning begetter/masculine parent. The early Quenya word wegê, meaning manhood or vigor, may be open to a variety of interpretations, and is indeed etymologically linked to the Quenya term vie. There was also a Quenya word meaning virgin, rod, as in Rodwen, "High Virgin Noble (female)." (Maeglin, The War of the Jewels, HME)

That is it for Official Tolkien Linguistic References to Elf Sex.