Q: What is the Origin of the Took Family Name?
ANSWER: There have been numerous attempts to decipher Tolkien’s source for the Took (Tûk in “legitimate” Westron) family name. I don’t know of any serious etymological work that has been done concerning this name but some fan sources cite an Old Norse origin of Thorketil (meaning “Thor’s Kettle” or “Thor’s Cauldron”). This seems unlikely to me.
There is another possible line of descent for the name, although I have no idea of how authoritative this information may be. A random family surname Website suggests that “those families bearing the names of Tucke, Tuck, Tuk, Tuke, Touke, Towke, Tooke, &c. trace their origin from le Sire de Tuke, a celebrated knight, who came over to England with William the Conqueror, and fought at the battle of Hastings, in 1066.” The last part of this sentence appears in a novel by James Spade, The Duality of His Life: Human Nature Versus Nurture: An Illustration of the black dichotomy (published 2006).
Le Sire de Tuke is also denoted as Le Seigneur de Touque(s) in Histoire sommaire de Normandie, Volume 1 by Louis L. de Masseville. The Seigneur served under William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings. Touques is a river in Normandy that flows into the sea. Curiously, there are twin port cities situated on opposing sides at the river’s mouth: the Port of Trouville-sur-Mer and the Port of Deauville. A historical Castle of Bonneville-sur-Touques stands near the mouth of the river, too, as I understand it (please forgive me if my French geography is not accurate).
The French pronounce “Touques” as tuk.
I think it is also interesting to note that there was a contemporary of Dr. Samuel Johnson, John Horne Tooke, who was a noted politician and philologist of his day. Unfortunately, Mr. Tooke lacked a biographer who could elevate his fame as James Boswell did for Dr. Johnson. Nonetheless the two men knew each other and many of Tooke’s sayings are preserved in The Table Talk of Samuel Rogers And S. T. Coleridge. John Horne Tooke retired to a house in Wimbledon Common where he held notable parties at which guests included politicians and the wealthy (which reminds me of both Brandy Hall and Great Smials being centers of Shire social life).
So while I know of no evidence to tie all these loose bits and pieces together, I think they make an interesting chain that, perhaps, serves as a plausible (if unprovable) alternative to the traditional “Thor’s Cauldron” root for Tolkien’s Took family name. He was not very fond of the French language but to name one of the leading hobbit families after a Philologist whose family traced its name back to Normandy — a place he himself had visited during the First World War — seems to me to be on the level of one of J.R.R. Tolkien’s many very subtle philological jests which he scattered throughout his fiction.
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I have a feeling that Tolkien’s mind was running on fairy themes when he chose the surname “Took”. It first appears as that of Bilbo’s mother Belladonna, who is ‘one of the three remarkable daughters of the Old Took’ (“The Hobbit”). As is common with hobbit-women Belladonna is a flower-name, in this case a comically sinister one as it is the poisonous plant Deadly Nightshade. However the name itself is derived from Romance words meaning “beautiful lady”. This seems in keeping with the Tooks’ rumoured fairy ancestry; the “lady” being the Goddess-figure Elbereth and the three sisters suggesting various feminine mythological triads: the Three Graces, Three Fates, Three Norns etc.
As your list shows, “Took” is usually taken as equivalent to “Tuck”, which is a more common surname in England (my local phone book lists six Tucks, one Tuckey, one Tookey and no Tooks). However in Northern English speech, in which Tolkien had a strong interest, “Tuck” is pronounced the same as “Took”; I believe the latter would be the usage in Middle English and before.
All of which may recall Rudyard Kipling’s book title “Puck of Pook’s Hill”. Tolkien probably despised Kipling’s Puck as much as he did Shakespeare’s (cf. ‘On Fairy Stories’), but he would have known that the name derives from O.E. puca, a goblin or mischievous sprite (and presumably the origin of the name “Pukel-Men” given by Rohirrim to the figures at Dunharrow).
Maybe by this kind of suggestion Tolkien chose the available surname “Took” as a hint at the family’s slightly uncanny qualities. On this theme, Chambers gives the etymology of “tuck” (as a verb) as O.E. tucian, to disturb or afflict; as perhaps in the related “touched” meaning slightly mentally awry.
Alternatively (but consistently) the joke might be that a Took marries a Baggins. “Tuck” can mean food, as in the “tuck-shops” found in posh (or would-be posh) schools like Tolkien’s; whereas according to Shippey, “baggins” is a Northern word for a labourer’s meal.
None of which rules out the Horne Tooke or de Touque connections, of course.
The insight into Tolkien’s possible influences and linguistic subtleties that one obtains simply from growing up in the same country as he cannot be over-appreciated. I am simply amazed at how rich and diverse the philological sources for many of Tolkien’s words and expressions can be, even if there are so many potential candidates that we’ll never really know what the “truth” of any particular point may be.
Thank you for a very enlightening look at Tucks, Tooks, Pucks, and Pooks. 🙂