Quenya is the fictional Elvish language associated with the Noldor in J.R.R. Tolkien’s legendarium.
Tolkien developed Quenya as a carefully structured language, drawing especially on features that reminded him of Finnish, Latin, and Greek. Within the fictional history, it originated among the Elves of Valinor and became associated particularly with the Noldor, a people central to the stories of the First Age.
Quenya appears in names, poems, inscriptions, and formal speech throughout Tolkien’s writings. Its vocabulary and grammar changed as Tolkien revised his linguistic ideas, so published examples do not represent a single completely fixed version. This is one reason the language is studied as an artistic construction rather than treated like a naturally evolved modern language.
Quenya is often confused with Sindarin, another major Elvish language. Sindarin became the everyday Elvish speech of much of Middle-earth, while Quenya had a more elevated and historical status there.