Q: Where Did J.R.R. Tolkien Come Up With All the Names for Middle-earth?
ANSWER: Most of the names that Tolkien used in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are drawn from three primary sources:
- Modern English family and place-names (e.g. Bag End, Gamgee)
- Old English and Middle English poetry (personal and place-names)
- Tolkien’s Elvish languages (Quenya, Sindarin, and Silvan Elvish)
Many of the names, especially Hobbit names, are Tolkien’s own contrivances based on obscure or traditional usage. For example, Peregrin Took uses a Latin first name with an English surname. Some of the Hobbit names are simply nonsense names (like Bungo, Bilbo, et. al.). Some modern and old-fashioned nick-names are also used (Merry, Pippin, et. al.).
Tolkien’s Dwarves take most of their names from Old Norse, especially from “The Poetic Edda: Voluspo”. A few First Age dwarf names (such as Gamil Zirak, Azaghal, and Telchar) appear to be devised from Tolkien’s Khuzdul language, or perhaps Sindarin.
Place-names in Rohan are given either in Old English (the Folde, Edoras) or modernized forms of Old English (Harrowdale, Snowbourne). All of the personal names of the Rohirrim are given in Old English, although it’s not clear if all were drawn directly from existing texts; some scholars suggest Tolkien devised a few Old English names from suitable roots.
Place-names in Gondor are given in Sindarin, as are most of the names of people living there.
The place-names for the Bree-land are related to Celtic words (“Bree” is taken from Celtic Bre, “hill”; “-chet, chet-” in “Archet” and “Chetwood” is Celtic chet, “wood”).
Tolkien chose his place-names to reflect either the character of the land or its history, or both. Most ancient place-names are historically given for similar reasons. This simple naming convention thus ensured that readers would find the nomenclature of the stories both sensible and undistracting. Tolkien sometimes gave two or more names to a place (“Rivendell/Imladris”, “Moria/Khazad-dum”) to reflect the different historical traditions that each distinct people associated with the place developed. “Rivendell” is a translation of Imladris, but “Moria” has an entirely different (and unflattering) meaning than Khazad-dum.
The Shire (a “translation”) took its name from an old word, Suza-t simply denoting an administrative region of Arnor; the Mark (a modernized Old English word meaning “borderland”) was called “Rohan” by people in Gondor, but the land was originally named Calenardhon (“green region”). Mirkwood was the Common Tongue name (translated) for Taur-e-Ndaedelos (“forest of great fear”) which had formerly been called “Greenwood the Great”.
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Have you read our other Tolkien and Middle-earth Questions and Answers articles?
Even the word “towel” seems to have quite a long etymological history. As a philologist Tolkien may have appreciated the ancientness of these words.
