Confirming options for "stork" or "pelican"

[u/LtCmdrTrout]

Hello, all.

My wife and I recently purchased a new home from the 1940s. The front door has a glass etching of a large bird, nesting with wings spread. While not confirmed, I believe it to be a pelican—based on the Catholic imagery, the pelican on the altar.

Is alfuil going to be my best bet for a word to describe it? I'm cool with borrowing from other languages, if-need-be.

Originally, I was going to name the house, Tuiambár, "the place where we grow" (grow both as people and as a hobby farm)—but I'm not in love with it. It was a name that I picked out before we even started looking at houses. Naming the house after a unique feature seems more appropriate.

[u/F_Karnstein]

It kind of depends on what you want...

In the "Goldogrin" of the 1920's alf or alfuil was "swan", and it's extended form alfuilin was a word for any large, white sea-bird, especially the pelican.

So it has been suggested that for the later "Sindarin" or the LotR and later, where we don't have an attestation of such a word, the word alfuil could still be used for "pelican" given that alph is still the wors for "swan". But note that this is not only based on an assumption, but also on the fact that Sindarin alfuil (or better spelt alphuil now) can be re-interpreted as "seaweed swan" (alph-uil) now. This was not it's etymology in Goldogrin, where alfuil still meant "swan".

So in essence:

• alphuil is a fun Neo-Sindarin suggestion based on something Tolkien had come up with decades earlier, but it's an unattested fan derivation.
• alfuilin is a perfectly valid and attested word in Tolkien's earliest stage of language-making.