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In a recent episode of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, the Orcs are chanting the word "Nampat" during a march.

According to some websites, it could mean either "Death" in Black speech, e.g., see here, or "to pay back" in Quenya, according to Reddit.

So, my question is: what does the word "Nampat" really mean? Canon sources from the books or Tolkien's letters are preferred, but if all fails, informed speculation could also be accepted.

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    Tolkien didn't say and it can't be deduced from any of his writings. Anyone else is just making it up, so I suppose it depends on how many people you can persuade to adopt your idea. (The TV show will probably persuade more people than I could.)
    – Mark Olson
    Commented Oct 11, 2022 at 0:35

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I think there is no alternative to taking the makers at their word. According to the X-Ray feature on Amazon Prime, under "General Trivia", the word is defined as:

"Nampat," the war-chant of the orcs, is the Black Speech word for "Death"

screen shot of the X-ray information, defining the word "nampat"

The Black Speech was one of the least developed of Tolkien's invented languages. It only has a corpus of about 32 words, mainly derived from the inscription on the One Ring, a line of dialogue shouted at Ugluk in The Two Towers, and various place names. Unfortunately "death" is not one of the words included, and so it is fair game for invention, which is what the writers seem to have done.

David Salo faced a similar problem in translating various songs into the Black Speech for The Hobbit movies, and came up with "gurutu" as a translation of "death". As he was not involved in The Rings of Power it seems that the writers did not take advantage of this.

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    @Mrc4t987 I believe "Dol Guldur" is in Sindarin, the "dol" meaning "hill". The Sindarin "guldur" and Black Speech "gûldur" are indeed very similar, but I do not know whether that is coincidence or not. "Gûl" is of course well-known to us through the compound word "Nazgûl" meaning "ring wraith".
    – Clara Díaz Sanchez
    Commented Oct 10, 2022 at 17:44
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    Except for the problematic timeline issue, Black Speech doesn't exist yet. The Dark Years have not yet begun. Once could argue the formation of Mordor was the beginning, but these orcs are anachronistically speaking this language before Mordor.
    – Wyrmwood
    Commented Oct 10, 2022 at 22:45
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    @Wyrmwood The inscription on the One Ring was written in Black Speech, so it was clearly around at the time
    – Clara Díaz Sanchez
    Commented Oct 10, 2022 at 22:51
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    @ClaraDiazSanchez In the books, the Black Speech was created in the Dark Years when Sauron was ruling Mordor, before any Rings were forged. In the show, Mordor just became Mordor.
    – Eugene
    Commented Oct 11, 2022 at 3:02
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    @Wyrmwood: The timeline in the show is radically different anyway - Sauron built Barad-dur c 1000 SA, forges the Ring in 1600 SA...but based on the current king in Numenor, it must be about 3200 SA. But the Downfall is clearly imminent, which occurs in 3319 SA. More than 2000 years of the SA are being condensed into at most a few years.
    – Shamshiel
    Commented Oct 11, 2022 at 11:34
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As mentioned above, the creators intended it to be "Death".

In a later episode, they say "Nampat Uglursha", which is supposed to mean "He died with honor" according to this discussion

Nampak uglursha - he died with honour.

So, "Nampat" would mean "death".

This also shows that Nampas does indeed mean "death"

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    Hi, welcome to SciFi.SE! Could you edit to include some quotes from the discussion you've linked? Sometimes links tend to die and the information is lost
    – fez
    Commented Feb 12 at 9:17
  • This does not provide an answer to the question. Once you have sufficient reputation you will be able to comment on any post; instead, provide answers that don't require clarification from the asker. - From Review
    – Kris
    Commented Feb 12 at 10:46
  • @Kris added clarifications to the answer :)
    – MaZZly
    Commented Feb 15 at 9:30
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    All the--well, we--Tolkien fanboys are so up in arms about the writers of a television show adding words to his invented languages that we might miss the significance of the fact that they added the concept of honor to orc culture.
    – Doug Warren
    Commented Sep 26 at 14:50

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