The Forgotten Heroes of the First Age

While The Lord of the Rings is full of heroes in the twilight of the Third Age, there is something to be said about the epic heroes of the First Age.  The legend of Turin slaying the dragon Glaurung; Beren, who managed to steal a Silmaril from Morgoth himself!  Not to mention Tuor, Hurin, Finrod, Beleg, Herion...

... wait a minute, who is Herion, you ask?  Read on!

When the latest collection of Tolkien miscellany came out, The Nature of Middle Earth, there were many interesting tidbits of information - the Numenoreans had dancing bears!  Dwarves would rather pull plows themselves than domesticate creatures!  The birthplace of the elves was just a few hundred miles off the eastern edge of the map! - a new piece of interesting information came up in, oddly enough, an essay on beards - namely, who had them.  In that discussion, as Tolkien often did, he casually mentioned a rather interesting piece of information while discussing the 'elvish' strain in the Dunedain and its effect on facial hair:

"It may anyway be observed that though Quenya names were not used, those used were probably all the names of renowned heroes in the royal lines of old as recorded in legend.  Some may come from tales now lost..."

Tolkien is talking about the House of Hurin - the hereditary Stewards.  Now, that Tolkien had recycled the names of various figures from his mythology, including some not generally known to others at the time, this is the first time that Tolkien has said the naming was an in-universe action as well as an out-of-universe one.  That names like Hurin, Denethor, Egalmoth, and so forth were used is not a coincidence.  Note also he said that "probably all" were the names of renowned heroes!  So who are our mystery names?  Well, combing through the entire line, we're left with the following list:

Pelendur, Vorondil, Mardil, Eradan, Herion, Belegorn, Cirion, Hallas, Belecthor, Beregond, Thorondir, Faramir and Elboron.

Without wild speculation, what can we say about these names?  There are a few pieces of information we can extract:

1.  The known names are all from the First Age; it is a reasonable assumption that these are all as well.

2.  The names are both of famous humans and elves.

3.  The stories about these people, while unknown to us, were famous enough at the time to still have their stories known and therefore be candidates for names.

One has to wonder about who these names represented.  Were any of them sailors with Earendil during his voyages?  Were they from the otherwise vague legends about the War of Wrath?  Did they represent individuals who made their own doomed stand against the forces of Morgoth that still delayed and weakened him enough to be counted in the end?  One has to wonder...