The first story in the first part of Appendix A speaks about Numenor and the characters concerned.
When Tolkien was young, he had a dream about being engulfed by a huge wave...I think that an entire country in his dream was swallowed up. He connected this to Atlantis, and thus we have Numenor. His dream and the old legends of Atlantis is where Numenor came from.
In Tolkien's world, he created a myriad of languages, and so every character and every place and probably every other thing you can think of in Middle-Earth has a meaning behind the name.
Numenor = Westernesse = West Land.
Numenor is located in the west. According to the first story in the Appendices, the people of Numenor were aloud to travel all waters but the west waters beyond Numenor. Numenor is described as the westermost of all mortal lands, granted to the Edain (men) for their sufferings in the cause against Morgoth, the Dark Lord before Sauron by the Valar. The narrative explains that they were not aloud to be given the gift of immortality by the Valar (more on these guys later), and if they sailed out of site west of their own shores, they would be pursuing this, because west of Numenor are the Undying Lands. (You'll remember that Frodo goes with Gandalf, Bilbo and Elrond and all the rest of his kin to the Undying Lands at the end of The Return of the King. )
It was under the evil teaching of Sauron that the downfall of Numenor began.
It was Ar-Pharazon is the cruel leader which eventually breaks and rebels and travels the forbidden waters. Because of the forbidden act, the "Valar called laid down their Guardianship and called upon the One, and the world was changed. Numenor was thrown down and swallowed in the Sea, and the Undying Lands were removed forever from the circles of the world. So ended the glory of Numenor.*"
There were a few that escaped from Numenor before it was swallowed by the Sea: Elendil (which, in Tolkien's legendarium means 'Elf-friend' or 'Star-lover) and his faithful followers foresaw the fall of Numenor and left, taking the Seven Seeing-Stones (remember the Palantir that Pippin got in trouble about? :D ) and a seedling of Nimloth. (Nimloth means White Flower in Tolkien's Language, and it is mentioned a few times in the Trilogy. It is the White Tree of Numenor...and also became the White Tree of Gondor.
At the end of the story, we find that Elendil and his followers believe Sauron to be perished, but the narrator says that this is not so, and gives a short account of how he was caught in the wreck of Numenor, but how only his body was lost to him, and so he took on a dark and hideous form that terrorized men. Sauron sulked in Mordor for a long time, but then grew angry enough, and war raged. The ring was cut from Sauron's hand by Isildur, and Sauron lost his form again. Thus ended the second age of the world.
Anna
* III, pp. 346
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