Noman-lands

The name given to a desolate region near the Gates of Mordor, in and around the land where the Battle of Dagorlad had been fought at the end of the Second Age. Even at the end of the Third Age, little grew in this stark land, in which withered peats lay separated by tracts of dried mud. This was an area of low sloping rises that lay between the Dead Marshes to the northwest, and the blasted ash heaps of the Desolation of the Morannon extending out from Mordor's Black Gate.

There can be little doubt that Tolkien chose the name 'Noman-lands' to reflect the 'No Man's Land' of the First World War, of which he had personal experience. Indeed, he used the label 'No Man's Land' on early maps for The Lord of the Rings, though the term did not survive into the published book. Like the historical 'No Man's Land', the Noman-lands had been devastated by battle, so that they remained empty and lifeless even thousands of years after the War that had ravaged them.