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Q: Was Helm Hammerhand’s Daughter Named Hera?
ANSWER: She was not named by J.R.R. Tolkien or Christopher Tolkien. Helm Hammerhand had 3 children, according to The Lord of the Rings: two sons (Haleth and Hama) and an unnamed daughter. It was a demand for a marriage between Helm’s daughter and Wulf, the son of a Rohirric nobleman named Freca, that led to the war between Rohan and the Dunlendings.
That war (which occurred during the years of the Long Winter, 2758 and 2759) is the inspiration for the plot of the animated movie The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim (scheduled for release in 2024). In the movie, Gaia Wise provides the voice for Hera, daughter of Helm.
Is Hera an Anglo-Saxon Name?
As names go, Hera is most famous for being the name of a Greek goddess (the ever-jealous wife of Zeus). In Greek the name means … well, actually, it doesn’t mean anything (that scholars have been able to determine).
Although I don’t know of any attested Anglo-Saxon (Old English) names like Hera, it could be that someone decided it might work based on the fact there were a few Old English names that ended in -a. Of the examples I can find, most were borrowed from other languages, were used only for men, or had unknown meanings.
One possible fictional root might be Heoru, meaning “sword”. So Hera could be a modernization of Heora, but I don’t know if that follows any rules for Old English naming.
It’s an odd choice for a translated Rohirric name, in my opinion, but there aren’t many good choices that would sound Tolkien-like. I don’t think Hera sounds like a name Tolkien would have used. But maybe only a Tolkien purist would care.
How Closely Does the Movie Plot Follow Tolkien’s Story?
Not very closely, judging by the summary on IMDB:
Set 183 years before the events chronicled in the original trilogy of films. A sudden attack by Wulf, a clever and ruthless Dunlending lord seeking vengeance for the death of his father, forces Helm and his people to make a daring last stand in the ancient stronghold of the Hornburg – a mighty fortress that will later come to be known as Helm’s Deep. Finding herself in an increasingly desperate situation, Hera, the daughter of Helm, must summon the will to lead the resistance against a deadly enemy intent on their total destruction.
Based on this summary (which may not be an accurate transcription of the production notes for all I know), the dating is off. The Long Winter began 260 years before Frodo left the Shire in Third Age year 3018. This summary would place the war in the year 2845.
In the book, Wulf is just the son of Freca, and neither is a Dunlending lord. Freca, according to the narrative was “a man named Freca, who claimed descent from King Fréawine, though he had, men said, much Dunlendish blood, and was dark-haired.” The narrative leaves open to the reader’s interpretation the idea that Freca had Dunlendish ancestry. The comment presages Helm’s insulting words to Freca: “Now, Dunlending, you have only Helm to deal with, alone and unarmed.”
Helm killed Freca with a single blow of his fist, declared Freca’s family outlaws, and then seized Freca’s lands in western Rohan. Wulf fled north to Dunland, where he found allies (perhaps because of his ancestry but Tolkien doesn’t elaborate on that).
The war breaks out in eastern Rohan, first, when unspecified enemies cross the Anduin. I would guess they were Easterlings in service to Sauron. Wulf seizes the opportunity to attack from Dunland. His forces (presumably western Rohirrim loyal to his father plus Dunlendings) are reinforced by unnamed “enemies of Gondor that landed in the mouths of Lefnui and Isen”. So Rohan is overrun by at least 3 armies (presumed Easterlings, Wulf’s army, and the “enemies of Gondor”).
The Rohirrim retreated into the mountains, not all to the Hornburg. Helm’s nephew Fréaláf was able to retreat to Dunharrow and it was from there that he brought a relieving force the next Spring (2759).
Now, that said, there’s no reason why the movie can’t follow the basic facts of Tolkien’s story. It could be the summary on IMDB is wrong or incomplete. So I’m not ready to criticize anyone on plot points for a movie that hasn’t yet been released.
Was Helm Hammerhand A Nazgûl?
In the books, no. In the game Middle-earth: Shadow of War, apparently. I can’t explain how the game designers came up with that. Maybe they had a beerful Friday night when they were naming characters. Who knows what evil lurks in the minds of the attorneys who hammer out the rights for all these derivative properties?
I only included this question because – well, because it seemed so interesting.
Does Helm Hammerhand’s Daughter Die?
Apparently she does in the game Middle-earth: Shadow of War. I don’t know if she dies in the movie. I don’t see why she should. I like bright and cheerful happy endings to my fiction. It’s not like leaving her alive would mean she’d have to ascend the throne of Rohan.
With this movie, there are now three traditions (that I know of) concerning Helm Hammerhand’s family. Only the account provided by J.R.R. Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings is canonical, whatever that means.
The game has its own canon, and the movie will have its own canon, just as the Amazon TV show has its canon and the Peter Jackson movies have their canon(s).
So far as I know, all these adaptations differ radically from the books so much because (A) no one can get the full rights to Tolkien’s works and (B) everyone has their own idea of what a “creative adaptation” should look like (and that doesn’t include the studio executives who purportedly move in to butcher everything in their path).
Should All Rohirric Names Be Drawn from Anglo-Saxon Sources?
Actually, no. If you’re naming characters in fan fiction, games, movies, TV shows, or whatever and you want them to be Rohirrim, you don’t have to limit yourself to Old English names. Tolkien occasionally used generic northern names like Baldor, Helm, Hild, and Wulf for his characters. These names might be more likely to occur in Scandinavian languages, and maybe Tolkien was slipping in a philological hint that the Rohirrim maintained some connections to their distant kin in and near Dale (even if only linguistically so).
If you want to create a female character, the names Ella or Inga would probably be suitable. You could also use Aelfwyn, Wulfwyn, and Wynhelm. Wynn, Wyn means “joy, delight” so you could probably add it to almost any noun and make a suitable female name. Hunig is the Old English word for “honey”, so Hunigwyn, Hunwyn could be a girl’s name. Old Norse hunang is the word for “honey”, so Hunwyn might work or Hunja if you wanted the name to be more “Dalish”.
Another pre/suffix you could try using is ást-,-ást (sounds like “ost”). This word means “love” in Faeroese (derived from Old West Norse) and Old English æst,est means “consent, kindness, pleasure”. The name Astrid is generally believed to derive from words meaning “god”+”beautiful” (frida,frid).
Conclusion
No one asked me to answer this question. I’ve been running behind schedule the past couple of weeks and needed a quick topic that didn’t require much research. Well, I toyed with the idea of listing possible Old English girl names but I didn’t see the point of doing that. It’s a needless criticism of the movie, which might be very enjoyable in its own right (I certainly hope it is).
That said, I might dig into some more questions about characters in the movie (or the games) or the TV show as time goes by, if I think there could be some confusion or curiosity about them. My blog visitors are certainly welcome to submit questions about all the adaptations. I’ll do my best to provide interesting answers.
See also
How Canonical Are J.R.R. Tolkien’s Published Works?
Will Amazon Create A New Canonical History for Middle-earth?
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Canon (Classic Essay)
How Did Tolkien Actually Portray the Rohirrim?
How did the Éothéod differ from the Rohirrim?
Ferthu Theoden Hal! (Classic Essay)
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Have you read our other Tolkien and Middle-earth Questions and Answers articles?
Hollywood treats the works of Tolkien with such disrespect its amazing. At least PJ honoured the source material. War of the Rohirimm will be a huge flop, its oblvious.
It’s not just his works.
Yes, it’s obvious and the production company is obviously oblivious.
I would have thought if Helm had a descendant alive they would succeed him, or at least that Hera’s son would. If the crown went to the sister-son and not the daughter-son, it doesn’t seem encouraging for the daughter’s prospects.
You raise an interesting point. The Rohirrim practiced male primogeniture but the fact that the crown went to Helm’s sister-son rather than to a child or grandchild of his daughter probably only reflects her unmarried status. Even if she had married and had a child in the 4 years after Helm’s confrontation with Freca, that child would have been too young to lead Rohan. For all intents and purposes, the Second Line represents a new dynasty even if it still claims descent from Eorl.
Eomer started a third dynasty, although he, too, was a descendant of Eorl.
If I was going to do a Hammerhand fanfic, I’d have him be rescued by the Bullroarer. After all, they were active at the same time and Brandobras did ride a horse, which could conceivably lead to him taking an interest in Rohan. But mostly I’d do it because it sounds cool.
Was Helm Hammerhand a Nazgûl?
The real question is, was Helm Hammerhand a Nazgûl with an Uzi? I’ve examined Tolkien’s works very carefully and he never said that this wasn’t the case.
Though now that I think about it, there really was a legend about Helm being a wraith that haunts Helm’s Deep. So after the War of the Ring, I could easily see some people in Rohan embellishing the legend to make him a Ringwraith. Maybe in the fullness of time, there would be stories about Eowyn, the epic heroine who slew Helm, Lord of the Nazgûl.
Helm is a hero to the Rohirrim. The Nazgûl are enemies. So they would make up any association between them and Helm.
I was thinking of some of the more foolish residents of Rohan.
The name Haleth for one of Helm’s sons made me pause. A character named Haleth already appears in the Silmarillion, as the female leader of a group of Edain in Beleriand. This leads to further questions:
Presumably the First Age name Haleth is an untranslated name from a First Age language of Men.
– Why then does a Third Age lord of the Rohirrim use such an ancient name from a long extinct language for one of his sons?
– Does this mean that Tolkien did not translate all Rohirric names to Anglo-Saxon or generic Northern Germanic?
– Could it be that Haleth is actually a Sindarin name? From the Silmarillion, I take this to be the less likely explanation, but who knows?
Is this an inconsistency in Tolkien’s fictional world?
Haleth is an actual Old English name for a man, so it makes sense the Rohirrim would have named someone that. Haleth is supposedly also a name in the language of the Haladin. One might say that Tolkien just chose the Old English name for the Edain leader because he liked the sound of it, figuring he would decide the meaning at some point. Then he later used the actual Old English name for the group whose language he decided to represent with Old English. Maybe that’s an inconsistency. But we see in our in our time that there are often names that are shared between two languages, but which are from two completely unrelated roots, so it’s not much of an inconsistency to say it happened here.
Several First Age names were reused in the Third Age, including Elvish names for men of Gondor (Mablung, Ecthelion, Denethor). In the real world, we see names from antiquity given to modern children, only slightly altered(Alexander, Adam, Noah, Penelope). The Rohirrim were supposedly descended from one of the original three houses of Edain, so why shouldn’t a few ancient names survive?
Personally, I look at this movie as well as the Rings of Power TV series as just fan-fiction. Well financed and flashy and lacking the DIY ascetic of something like the Star Trek fan productions like Phase lI, Farragut or Star Trek Continues, but still fan fiction with no impact what so ever on cannon. Some fan-fiction can be amazing, some can be absolutely horrible.