J.R.R. Tolkien attributed the fictional script Tengwar to the Elf Fëanor.
Within Tolkien’s mythology, Fëanor created the Tengwar, whose name means “letters” or “characters” in Quenya. The script was designed to represent the sounds of languages rather than merely to copy one alphabet. Its signs can be used for Quenya, Sindarin, and other tongues, with spelling conventions adapted to the language being written.
Tengwar became widely used across Middle-earth and appears in inscriptions, title pages, maps, and fan reproductions of Tolkien’s writing. The Ring-inscription is commonly displayed in Tengwar, although the language of the inscription is the Black Speech of Mordor. This distinction matters: Tengwar is the writing system, while the Black Speech is the language expressed in that particular text.
Tolkien also created Cirth, a separate runic script associated especially with the peoples of Beleriand and later with Dwarves. The two systems are therefore not interchangeable. Modern displays of Tengwar often use invented fonts, but Tolkien’s original samples show that the letters could vary according to different writing modes.