Mellon

Mellon is a surname and the name associated with a prominent American family whose members played significant roles in banking, industry, and philanthropy. The name also appears in fiction as a Sindarin word meaning “friend,” notably used as the password to the Doors of Durin in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth.

Notable Mellon family members include Andrew W. Mellon (1855–1937), a banker and industrialist who served as U.S. Secretary of the Treasury from 1921 to 1932; his son Richard King Mellon (1858–1933), a Pittsburgh businessman and philanthropist; and Paul Mellon (1907–1999), a renowned art collector and patron. The Mellon family has funded museums, universities, and research institutions over the decades.

Institutions and organizations bearing the Mellon name include the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, established in 1969 to support the arts and humanities. Mellon Bank, a Pittsburgh financial institution, later became part of Mellon Financial and, in 2007, merged with Bank of New York to form Bank of New York Mellon (BNY Mellon), a major global financial services company.

The Mellon Institute of Industrial Research was a Pittsburgh-based research organization founded with Mellon family support in 1900. In 1967, it merged with the Carnegie Institute of Technology to form Carnegie Mellon University, a leading research university in Pennsylvania.

In popular culture, mellon is the Sindarin word for “friend” in Tolkien’s writings and is used as the password to the Doors of Durin, a moment often cited in discussions of Tolkien’s language invention.