Transcribe name in Tengwar

[Bodygardner]

I want to get a tattoo of my cat's name written in Tengwar. I've looked at few different sites and have ended up with 3 different versions. Can someone help me figure out which one is accurate? My cat's name is Lumos.

 

[Elthir]

I'd say they are each correct, according to the "general use" mode for English anyway.

The differences here are due to vowel placement (with respect to the third example), and the choice of how to employ the "s-tengwa".

 

[Bodygardner]

Awesome, thank you!

 

[Elthir]

No problem! And just in case anyone's wondering about s here, the basic explanation is that this letter has an inverted form.

Tolkien notes that the inverted forms for s and z were mostly used as mere variants ". . . according
to the convenience of writing, e. g. they were much used when accompanied by superimposed tehtar." JRRT, Writing and Spelling, The Return of the King, Appendix E

Anyway, that's why it looks different in example two (inverted form).

 

[Elthir]

Wanted to add: I can't recall if Tolkien ever employs the vowels that look like curls (u or o here)
"next to" a regular (non-inverted) s-tengwa, as seen in your first example. I recall examples of e and a (in an Elvish text), but again, can't seem to recall examples with u or o.

I'm not an expert myself, and perhaps we don't need a written example from JRRT to answer every question, but as you're intending to write this on your flesh, just to be safer, for now, I'd choose either example two or three (about which I'm more certain) until an actual expert shows up.

Sorry. Should have considered this earlier.