I use alben which is al-+pen.

It's probably referring to Uvanwaith "Nomenlands" which is in Eldamo. I will check the source material when I get home.

Yep, I just confirmed it: Uvanwaith appears on all three pages. See Roman Rausch's analysis here: http://www.sindanoorie.net/art/RS_TI_WR.html#Uvanwaith

Like Fiona, I say alphen, with liquid mutation.

I think vocalic mutation because the prefix used to be ala-.

We have aRPHen, and naRBeleth. Both may work. Though the latter is a compound word, while the former employs a prefix, ar(a)-.

Thanks a lot! :D Glad I asked, seems like it's a pretty shortsighted interpretation to gloss uvan as "nobody" :) And thanks a lot for the alternatives!

The sentence I was asked to translate, among other's, was "trust nobody". Given I also found no real match for "trust" (neither noun nor verb with this connotation) I will probably go with something along "Listen to noone's word".

Uvan certainly happens to look like a combination of û and man/mân which would be something of a Finnicism (Finnish having the subject/nominative ei kukaan, direct object ei ketään, from interrogative pronoun kuka "who?").

For what it's worth, Slavic works this way as well. E.g. Czech kdo "who" - nikdo "nobody" (lit. "not-who").

+Lokyt L. Same in Hungarian: ki and senki

In Japanese, it's daremo, which is dare "who?" + -mo. You can only use it in a negative sentence, because -mo isn't really negative, it's more like a conditional. "Dare iru ka?" - "who's​ there?", "daremo inai" -"no one's​ there."

The thing I am just wondering about is, if uvan indeed is "nobody" and waith is lenited gwaith "people", then how come the translation of Uvanwaith is Noman*lands*? Seems a bit far-fetched that the part "lands" is only implied...

Gwaith can also be used to indicate the place where a certain people live.

+Severin Zahler see Forodwaith

+Fiona Jallings but the root is an ancient reversible and hence underlyingly 'AL. So why no liquid when even Quenya has alkárima etc.?

It is a possibility, but we don't have any evidence to decide the question for us either way yet.