You know what’s interesting? How the Rohirrim named their own land. I don’t mean “Rohan,” which is a name that Gondor cooked up and that the Rohirrim use sometimes. I mean the two versions of their name that came from the Rohirrim themselves: “Lōgrad,” which means “Borderlands of the Horsemen” in actual Rohirric and “the Riddermark,” which means essentially the same thing in the Old English that stands in for Rohirric in the text.
BOTH of those terms explicitly position Rohan first and foremost as a border zone, and that seems to me like a notably odd way to conceptualize your own country because it’s relational. You aren’t defined as yourself; you’re defined as the edge of someone else. It’d be like if the U.S. was called “Land of the People South of Canada.” (I don’t hate that, TBH.)
In Rohan’s case, the border they’re talking about can only be Gondor’s. It’s the most consequential border they have by far, and it’s the border that explains their entire existence as a kingdom. It’s why Cirion gave the land to Eorl in the first place — yes, he was grateful for Eorl’s help, but also (and explicitly) he wanted a friendly neighbor on Gondor’s northern/western edges whose kingdom would insulate core Gondorian territory from historical enemies.
With that being the founding purpose of Rohan, it’s not surprising for that role to become inextricably tied to the identity of the kingdom. But I do find it surprising that it was the Rohirrim themselves who chose to reflect that borderland identity in their kingdom’s own native name. They didn’t call their country Land of the Horses (which is essentially what the Sindarin word “Rohan” means) or name themselves after Eorl or import some name of an ancestral place from their northern days. In the most authentic expression of who they are — how they identify themselves in their own language and when speaking only to each other — they chose to identify themselves as the riders who protect Gondor’s flank. You can put forward several different theories about why that might be the case,* but whatever the ultimate cause I just think it’s INTERESTING to think about.
* There is a large, popular blog around here that gets irritated with me whenever I say that there is a hierarchy being enforced between Gondor and Rohan so I won’t get into it. But that’s an explanation that resonates for me!
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