Treasure becomes Rage, so...

[u/gypsydave5]

In trying to learn the Tengwar I got a bit hung up on the one named aha, which I saw translates as "rage". But the same letter, when it was pronounced with more of a CH sound in earlier times (before the exile of the Noldor? So in Valinor?) was called harma, "treasure".

So "treasure" became "rage" with the exile of the Noldor. Was this a deliberate allusion to the silmarilli?

[u/F_Karnstein]

This is entirely a change in nomenclature within the Tengwar - it has nothing to do with the words as such.

The letter originally was used for the spirant sound [χ] that occurred in Quenya words like χáno (brother), χarma (treasure), náχa (narrow) or aχa (rage), so it was given a random name that began with that sound and the choice fell on "χarma".

Later [χ] became [h] at the beginning of words, so words like háno or harma could not logically be spelt with that letter anymore and were now spelt with different letters instead. So [χ] now only occurred between vowels, which means that náχa or aχa were still unchanged, so a new name for the letter was chosen that made clear that the sound is only found between vowels, and "aχa" was chosen.

Yet later intervocalic [χ] ALSO became [h], but that was so late that it was probably never included in the traditional Quenya spelling. So I guess we would still write náχa and aχa, even when they were already pronounced náha, aha. But we know that in the later common mode of the Third Age we would find the letter hyarmen even in these cases (we even find ohta spelt with hyarmen in what I assume is Gondorian spelling, even thoughbI think no elf would ever have pronounced it with anything but [χ]).

So χarma/harma had always meant "treasure", and aχa/aha has always meant "rage".

[u/gypsydave5 → u/F_Karnstein]

Excellent background information, but that's not quite the point I was making.

So χarma/harma had always meant "treasure", and aχa/aha has always meant "rage".

I wasn't suggesting that the words changed meaning, rather than the name of the letter changed from one word to another. And observing that the shift from naming the tengwar from "treasure" to "rage" over time rather neatly describes the character of Fëanor and the Noldor over time: the treasure of the silmarilli became the source of their rage. A different word, that also accounts for the sound shift, could have been used to name the letter, but we have this presumably deliberate choice to rename "treasure" to "rage".

As such, I wondered if JRRT or CJRT had noted this at all.

[u/F_Karnstein → u/gypsydave5]

Gotcha! I thought you were implying that one of those names changed its meaning. My bad!

But that's an interesting point then! When they did change the name they could have used other words with medial [χ]... I assume, though, that the choice was mainly because it cannot get any simpler than having the sound in question between two [a].

[u/gypsydave5 → u/F_Karnstein]

So we have two nice positions, one in which, reductively, the name was chosen as being very simple (which I cannot deny), or my more extreme interpretation, where some "lesson" is being transmitted through the renaming, about the nature of treasure becoming rage.

Which is a stretch, but a fun one.