Places in Middle-earth
Rhûn
Type: Kingdoms, Realms, Lands
Region: Mordor/Allies
Meaning: The East
Location: The vast land-locked region east of Rhovanion; contains the inland Sea of Rhûn; its many tribes of people, the Easterlings, had long been corrupted by Morgoth and Sauron.
Description: The bounds of this region were naturally vague; its ... frontier was roughly the River Carnen to its junction with Celduin (the River Running), and so to Núrnen....
Unfinished Tales, Part 4, Ch 2, The Istari
... Mordor, which was occupied by Sauron, although outside his original realms "in the East"....
Unfinished Tales, Part 4, Ch 2, The Istari
[After 1899 III, the Battle against the Wainriders at Dagorlad]
In the meanwhile the Wainriders ... plotted their revenge. Beyond the reach of the arms of Gondor in lands east of the Sea of Rhûn from which no tidings came to its Kings, their kinsfolk spread and multiplied, and they were eager for conquests and booty and filled with hatred of Gondor which stood in their way. It was long, however, before they moved. On the one hand they feared the might of Gondor, and knowing nothing of what passed west of Anduin they believed that its realm was larger and more populous than it was in truth at that time. On the other hand the eastern Wainriders had been spreading southward, beyond Mordor, and were in conflict with the peoples of Khand and their neighbours further south [in the Harad].
Unfinished Tales, Part 3, Ch 2, Cirion and Eorl and the Friendship of Gondor and Rohan: The Northmen and the Wainriders
Etymology
romen 'uprising, sunrise, east' (Quenya) in Rómenna. The Sindarin words for 'east', rhûn (in Talath Rhunen) and amrûn, were of the same origin.
The Silmarillion, Appendix: Elements in Quenya and Sindarin Names
Contributors: Elena Tiriel 22May05
