Published with the help of the Tolkien Estate and Christopher Tolkien, illustrated by Alan Lee, this work is single in its kind. It has now been released in French as a paperback version by Christian Bourgois éditeur.

The reader will find explanations of many Elven names and discover the starting points of many tales imagined by Tolkien.

The Etymologies is a document edited by Christopher Tolkien which appears in English in the The History of Middle-Earth: the Lost Road and Other Writings.

Christopher Tolkien described it as "a remarkable document." It is neither a dictionary nor an instructional primer - words are not listed in alphabetical order - it is essentially a list of "roots" which J. R. R. Tolkien used as building blocks in creating the Elvish languages of Arda, namely Quenya and Sindarin.

Christopher Tolkien said in his introduction that his father was "more interested in the processes of change than he was in displaying the structure and use of the languages at any given time." (Lost Road p. 378.)