How to use this Page

By Michael Adams

It will be interesting to see how much of J.R.R. Tolkien’s several invented languages will appear in Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit. In a letter to his American publisher, dated 30 June 1955, Tolkien suspected there were limits to how much invented language readers would ‘stomach’ — to use his term. There are certainly limits to how much can be included in a film. American audiences, anyway, are subtitle averse.

Of Tolkien’s invented languages, Elvish receives most attention, not unreasonably, since it is illustrated most often in Tolkien’s works and most fully articulated in his manuscripts. Other languages are essential to The Lord of the Rings, however. When Gandalf reads out the delicately curved Elvish script on the One Ring in the rough-hewn Black Tongue of Mordor it represents so incongruously, Tolkien proves that some language — just the sound of it — can petrify us as surely as any Ringwraith. Tolkien’s languages aren’t suitable only for poetry or gnomic verses on rings. They also include the element of language most familiar to speakers speaking to one another every day, namely, names.

Tolkien as Philologist

When Tolkien came up with what sounded to him like a name, he would play with it a bit, experiment with its sound structure, and eventually a system of linguistically related names would emerge. Thus a family was invented, a family with relationships to other families in a mythical place, ready to take part in stories. As Tolkien explained in the letter already mentioned, “The ‘stories’ were made rather to provide a world for the languages than the reverse. To me a name comes first and the story follows.” And in his lecture on creating languages, ‘A Secret Vice’ (1931), he wrote “the making of language and mythology are related functions” and an invented language, at least one developed at length, will inevitably “breed a mythology.”

Tolkien was always a philologist, whether in scholarship or fiction. He treated his fictional languages as though they were real, as though he were discovering rather than inventing them. In his scholarship, reconstruction of the sound system or grammar of languages like Old English and Old Norse was routine. For instance, he wrote ‘Appendix I: The Name “Nodens”’, in the Report on the Excavation of the Prehistoric, Roman, and Post-Roman Sites in Lydney Park, Gloucestershire, published by the Research Committee of the Society of Antiquaries of London (1932). So, it isn’t in every library, but it has been helpfully reprinted in Volume 4 of the annual journal Tolkien Studies (2007). In it, you will find passages like this one: “Although it is perhaps vain to try and disentangle from the things told of Nuada any of the features of Nodens of the Silures in Gloucestershire, it is at least highly probably that the two were originally the same. This is borne out by the isolation of the name in Keltic [sic] material, the importance of Nuada (and of Nodens), and not least by the exact phonological equation of Nōdont- with later Nuadat.” This reads very much like a passage from one or another appendix to The Lord of the Rings, and if you read it without knowing it deals with a matter of linguistic and historical fact, you might well think it was fiction.

How to Name a Baggins

Many names in Tolkien’s fiction are not invented, or, at least, not invented by him. Nearly all of the names of dwarfs in The Hobbit can be found in Dvergatal or ‘Tally of the Dwarfs’ in the Old Norse poetic Edda, as can the Old Norse precursors of Gandalf and Thorin’s nickname, Oakenshield. Hobbit names are an interesting blend of borrowed and invented items. For instance, a few males of the Baggins family of Hobbits sometimes bear real — though indisputably outmoded — personal names, such as Drogo (name popular among the French nobility c1000 CE, but since, not so much), Dudo (name of a tenth-century Norman historian and ecclesiast), and Otho (name of a Roman emperor). Other masculine names are converted from surnames or words found in natural languages, such as Balbo, Bingo, Fosco, Largo, Longo, Minto, Polo, and Ponto. But still others appear to be well and truly invented by Tolkien, such as Bilbo, Bungo, and Frodo. Perhaps they were invented to sound and look like the borrowed and converted names, but more likely those were found to fit patterns implied by the invented ones.

Many female Bagginses were given English flower names, such as Daisy, Lily, Myrtle, Pansy, Peony, and Poppy. Others had personal names common in English and other natural languages, for instance, Angelica, Dora, Linda, and Rosa. And a few bore personal names converted from surnames, like Belba, or historical but unfamiliar personal names, like Prisca (name of a Roman empress). The repurposing of such names and words as names of Hobbits may be inventive yet not count as an invention. Yet the invention is not of the names themselves — not most of them, anyway — but of linguistic relations among the names and social relations, embedded in the linguistics, among those to whom they belong.

The names have no actual relation to one another. They are borrowed from Italian and Scots and Norman French, or in those few cases made up. Tolkien brought them into relation by means of their sound shapes: the masculine names, whatever the source, and for whatever genuine etymological reason, are all two syllables and end in -o, which is proposed as a mark of the masculine name in the naming practices of Bagginses. For female Bagginses, the flower names are a fashion that obscures the way gender is marked in Baggins names: Belba, Dora, Linda, Prisca, and Rosa are marked with the contrasting feminine -a. Among all of the flower names, the -a names suggest a diminishing but tenacious historical tendency. But all language changes, as do naming practices, and any reconstruction of personal names in a historical language must account for remnant forms, anomalies, and generational trends.

There and Back Again

Other Hobbit clans have different types of names from those of the Bagginses. Brandybuck names have a distinctly Celtic shape, given the profuse -doc suffix: Gormadoc, Marmadoc, Saradoc, and, of course, Meriadoc. The Tooks prefer names from medieval romance and beast epic: Adelard, Ferumbras, Flambard, Fortinbras (rather than Armstrong, which has a quite different shape), Isengrim, and Sigismund, for instance. The Longfathers have names constructed from Anglo-Saxon elements: Hamfast and Samwise, in which -wise may mean, as it sometimes does in Anglo-Saxon, ‘sprout, stalk’. Over the generations, clan marries into clan, and the names mingle and develop new patterns: the names are the genealogical architecture of a culture.

Through alliances and friendships, Hobbit culture reticulates into the wider web of cultural relationships across Middle Earth and deep into the mythology of which the story of Middle Earth is only a part. The linguistic bases for cultural relationship and contrast are woven tightly and everywhere into the fabric of Tolkien’s fiction. In the middle of the mythological pattern, Tolkien has pricked in the -o and the -a, suffixes that say something about who the Bagginses are, or who they think they are, something that allows one Baggins to find the Ring and another to destroy it, just in time.

Michael Adams teaches English language and literature at Indiana University. In addition to editing and contributing to numerous linguistic journals, he is the author of Slang: The People’s Poetry and Slayer Slang: A Buffy the Vampire Slayer Lexicon, and he is the editor of From Elvish to Klingon: Exploring Invented Languages.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Subscribe to only lexicography and language articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.

The post The Naming of Hobbits appeared first on OUPblog.

Add a Comment

We all know writers have a love of words, but did you know Sarah Prineas also has a love for maps?

An interesting thing about hobbits is they don't like to travel, but Bilbo always loved maps. Especially Thror's map.

I love maps, too, with a deep and geeky love for things like magical runes and "here there be dragons" and the compass rose and place names like "the Withered Heath" and "Mirkwood the Great".

For fantasy writers, maps are really important because we often create what Tolkien called a "secondary world" that is, a world completely removed from the "real" world, with its own geography and history. Maps make real the places of the imagination. That's why you'll see maps in the first couple of pages of many fantasy novels, including THE MAGIC THIEF.
When the book was being designed, my editor asked me for a map sketch to give the artist. I started out by consulting a really excellent map of 18th century London because Wellmet, the city in my book, is very loosely based on it, especially Southwark which was, back then, the seedy side of the Thames. I was inspired by the twisty streets with the funny names:

London map

Then I started sketching, coming up with twisty streets and funny names of my own. This is a detail from the Twilight, the part of Wellmet where you wouldn't want to live:

Display Comments Add a Comment

I hope you all had the happiest of Thanksgivings! It was great to see my parents (HI MOM AND DAD! I KNOW YOU'RE READING THIS!) It was nice to also just hang out a bit and relax.

Yesterday afternoon, we were all sitting in the living room reading. Well, Dan was doing something on his laptop. I knew Mom was at the end of a spy novel. I was pretty into my book, too. Dad looked like he was into his.

Dan: So, what are we going to do all afternoon
Me: Um, I think we could just sit here in read, I know Mom's near the end of her book
Dan:?!
Me: Dear, they are my parents. This pointing to them, and to my book is totally a learned behavior!

Also, while we were gorging ourselves on mashed potatoes and stuffing (ha ha, not me. Two things I don't like. I gorged on pie. And cranberry dressing.) Our fearless Cybils leaders were putting together the final long lists. CHECK THEM OUT!

So usually, when I post multiple reviews, there's some sort of theme or something. Today's theme is:

These books are all due back at the library TODAY. In order in which I liked them:

Confessions of a Blabbermouth Mike Carey, Louise Carey, illustrated by Aaron Alexovich

So, this is part of the Minx series of graphic novels. My favorite, up to this point, was Re-Gifters , but I think I like this one better. The good news is, they're both by Mike Carey, so now I have a new author to be on the look-out for!

Anyway, Tasha is an angry blogger whose mother has a knack for dating losers. This new one she's brought home? Takes the cake and thinks that Tasha just needs a strong father figure in her life. His own daughter, of course, is perfect. Too bad she's a grade-A stuck up bee-yotch. And every time Tasha thinks that Chloe might be human after all, Chloe writes something awful in her newspaper column.

Tasha is supposed to spend spring break in the US, off-line, with these freaks?! How will she survive?!

Hilarious. Carey obviously knows how to write for the medium of the graphic novel and Alexovich's depictions of the bully Big Sylvie? Excellent.

The Diary of Ma Yan: The Struggles and Hopes of a Chinese Schoolgirl Ma Yan Ed. by Pierre Haski. Trans. from the French by Lisa Appignanesi, originally trans. from the Mandarin by He Yanping

Ma Yan is a school girl from Ningxia province, in Central China. She is a member of the Muslim Hui minority. She, like many of her neighbors, is extremely poor. She struggles with spending 50 fen (which is about 6 US cents). All she wants is to go to school, to make her family proud, to get a good job so she can support her family. School is expensive and she's often pulled out so her brothers can go and she can work at home. Her father spends most of his time in Inner Mongolia, looking for work. Her mother is very ill and climbs mountains far away from home, picking fa cai to sell.

This is not so much a good book as an important one. Ma Yan's diary is written by the thirteen year old girl that she is. She's not writing for an audience. Her prose goes between matter-of-fact and very earnest. But what she does is paints a picture of modern day Chinese poverty that can get forgotten in all the coverage of China's booming economy. She paints a picture of hunger and parental sacrifice. And, above all, she paints a picture of hope and the strength of spirit. That sounds dumb, but it's true.

The photographs and Haski's information given valuable insight and background information.

I Am the Wallpaper Mark Peter Hughes

Floey Packer is sick of always being overlooked in favor of Lillian, her fabulous older sister. So, one summer, stuck at home with her two terrible cousins, she decides to make herself fabulous.

And she's getting the attention she wants. Until she finds out why. (Now, I think this is a bit of a spoiler, but it says so on the back cover so... her evil little cousin is posting her diary on the internet. No wonder her best friend is so pissed off!)

The problem with Floey is... Hughes has captured the voice of a 13 year old perfectly. The guy she likes called her and they talked for an hour! It doesn't matter that they're good friends, he obviously LIKES her! It's all going so well!

And, frankly, 13 year old girls? Are annoying. Oiy. So, Floey annoyed me. It's never good when your narrator annoys you. But, she annoyed me because Hughes is so good. Aiya.

Also, Floey writes a lot of haikus. Love. It's good while still sounding like it was actually written by a teen.

Blood Red Horse K. M. Grant

This is an excellent book for a teen who still loves horses.

Hosanna is the blood red horse of the title. A horse with mystical powers to bridge opposite sides of the Crusades.

Gavin and Will are brothers. Ellie's the girl that Will loves but is betrothed to Gavin.

Richard is the king that's dragging everyone (Well, not Ellie) off to the Holy Land.

La la la la la la.

This book took me a month and a half to read. I just couldn't get that into it. But, I was enough into it that I couldn't put it down, you know? I'm not that into horses anymore. And the crusade battle scenes? Kinda bored me. That's never a good thing.

Display Comments Add a Comment