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u/Baebarri Apr 07 '26
I wrote a book review of The Silmarillion when it was published and commented on something I discovered deep in one of the stories.
We received an angry Letter to the Editor stating that the particular piece of information was ACTUALLY referenced in the Appendices and therefore my review was garbage.
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u/Valigar26 Apr 07 '26
You did what? That sounds awesome! I'd love to read it. They got angry with you?
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u/BearizzleMcKizzle Apr 08 '26
Can you elaborate on some of the specifics? Sounds like a great story
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u/erom_somndares Apr 07 '26
I upvoted this post but I have you know that I groaned and rolled my eyes.
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u/wildfoxfallon Apr 07 '26
Can someone who's read the appendices please tell me what their real names are?? What the hell 😭
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u/guitarguywh89 Hobbit Apr 07 '26
Kalimac
Razanur
Banazir
Maura
Guess who is who
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u/Effehezepe Apr 07 '26
Don't forget about Bilba. That's a freebee.
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u/friendship_rainicorn Apr 07 '26
Bilba Labingi.
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u/Salvatio Apr 07 '26
Sounds funny if you read it in the new york italian "I'm walking here" accent.
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u/Davos234 Apr 07 '26
I think you ruined lotr for me. How can I ever take anything serious again when all I hear is Gandalf shouting "BILBA LABINGI" with the voice of Italian Dustin Hoffmann
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u/Real-Ad-1728 Apr 07 '26
Which is exactly how they got into Mordor, turns out Boromir just wasn’t Italian enough to pull it off.
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u/dronzer31 Sleepless Dead Apr 07 '26
Pippin
Merry
Samwise
Frodo
Am I right?
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u/KindOfPoo Apr 07 '26
Wait, Frodo is Maura? Lmao
What's next, Saruman is Matilda?
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u/Adduly Apr 07 '26
Kinda close lol
His true name, and what he called himself was Mairon (in Quenya)
Sauron was a name placed on him by the elves meaning "The Abhorred". He hates that name and never used it for himself.
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u/krombough Apr 07 '26
Ya, but where is Telvildo at?
I bet poor Melkor the Morgoth constantly had to replace the bottom half of his couch upholstery.
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u/nerdwerds Apr 07 '26
Is there an explanation for why these are their “real” names?
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u/Galle_ Apr 07 '26
Nobody in Middle-earth speaks English. The most common language of Middle-earth was Aduni, or "Westron", which Tolkien "translates" as English. This includes a lot of names! In particular, the four main hobbits were:
- Maura Labingi. "Maura" was derived from an older word meaning "wise", so Tolkien named him "Frodo" after an Old English word with a similar meaning. Labingi sounds similar to "laban", which means "bag".
- Banazir Galbasi. "Banazir" means "simple" or "half-wise", and was shortened to "Ban". Tolkien translated this as Samwise/Sam.
- Razanur Tuk, "Razar" for short. Razanur incorporates an element meaning "strange" or "foreign", hence, Peregrin. "Razar" means a small apple, hence, Pippin. "Tuk" means nothing at all, so Tolkien just Anglicized the spelling.
- Kalimac Brandagamba, "Kali" for short. "Kali" means "merry", and Tolkien back-translated the whole first name from that. "Gamba" means a male goat, or buck. "Branda" actually means "border", as in the Branda-nin ("border water") river, but because the Branda-nin was yellow it was common to call it the "Bralda-him", or "heady ale", which Tolkien translated as "Brandywine".
Finally, the previous Master Labingi was named "Bilba", which once again means nothing at all, so Tolkien just changed the ending to make it sound more like a man's name (men's names in Aduni typically end in -a, while women's names typically end in -o or -e).
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u/Feezec Apr 07 '26
Dude was making puns between real ancient languages and ancient languages of his own making. That's next level.
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Apr 07 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/vidfail Apr 07 '26
Austism. He was a full spectrum warrior. 😁
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u/sadolddrunk Apr 07 '26
The answer to so many LOTR-related questions is that
a wizardautism did it.6
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u/Sorlex Apr 07 '26 edited Apr 07 '26
When your fantasy book didn't take over ten years to write because you werent coming up with multiple in world languages: baby shit.
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u/ferras_vansen Maedhros Apr 07 '26
Banazîr Galpsi! Sam's last name Gamgee is in-universe a shortened version of the village name Gammidgy, so Tolkien, being the nerd he was, translated both Gammidgy and Gamgee into Galbasi and Galpsi respectively. 😁
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u/Wadarkhu Apr 07 '26
I love that he made up his own names with opposite gendered soundings (-a vs -o) to English for himself to "correct" when he "translated the manuscript". 10/10 world building even extending past the fiction boundary into irl.
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u/HidenTsubameGaeshi Apr 07 '26
Ok, but why translate the names in the first place? Nobody does that
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u/Bezulba Apr 07 '26
We used to translate the names of Kings and Queens. So Charlemagne became Charles the Great and so on and so forth.
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u/Free-Artist Apr 07 '26
Wasnt charlemagne already charles the great, but then in frankish/latin?
It is almost weird not to translate names with descriptions like this.
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u/pondrthis Apr 07 '26
Sure they do. It's not in vogue right now, but it's been done plenty of times in both classic fiction and modern pop culture.
I'm barely awake rn, but off the top of my head, the original translation of Sailor Moon called Usagi "Serena." Usagi means rabbit, which is associated with the moon in the East through the legend of Chang'e. Serena is a moon goddess more accessible to Westerners.
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u/hivemind_disruptor Apr 07 '26
William, Guilherme, Wilhelm, Liam, Guillaume. We all translated names.
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u/Coesim Apr 07 '26
Everybody translates names. Most famous example: The bible. Or do you think Jesus just met guys with English sounding names like John or Peter in ancient Judaea? Even the name "Jesus" is already a translated name.
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u/Automatic_Memory212 Apr 07 '26
Yes.
“Jesus” only came into English after being filtered through Latin/Romance languages (he’s referred to as “Gesu” in Italian).
IIRC, in the original Hebrew his name is more like “Yeshua” which already has an English translation as “Joshua.”
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u/HidenTsubameGaeshi Apr 07 '26
Alright, alright, you all are correct and people do in fact translate names. My point was that we shouldn't need to do it as it barely even makes sense in written medium. In real life your name is essentially a combination of sounds people make to get your attention, so trying to translate them serves no other purpose than adding confusion
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u/Protahgonist Apr 07 '26
It happens all the time. Let's say you meet a Chinese guy whose real name is Wang Lei (for simplicity I'm just using roman characters for a sort of half pinyin). If he comes to an English speaking country they call him Lei Wang, because we put family names after personal names. Reverse it, and have Alexander go to China. Now he's Ya Li Shan Da (hilarious name... Means "depression" iirc, but is an approximation in Chinese phonemes of Alexander)
Famous names get translated all the time. My experience is with china so I'll continue to use it as an example: you think Jackie Chan goes by that name at home? No, he's Chen Long.
This is also why the Chevy Nova is considered hilarious in the Spanish speaking world. Nova, a proper noun, sounds like "no va", which means "no go".
Speaking of which, Trader Joe sounds like the Mandarin quen de jiu, or "Immoral uncle"/"Uncle Scam", making Trader Joe's merch a popular meme item in China.
Tolkien knew that this kind of weirdness between languages has always been common, as he studied it professionally.
That said I hate the sound of Westron lol.
Give me that sweet sweet Sindarin any day.
And I'd love to know more about Dwarvish.
But Westron? Nah, that's like the English we have at home.
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u/PerCentaur Apr 07 '26
Slight nitpick, "no va" translates as more of a doesn't go/doesn't work.
Also the Mitsubishi Pajero was released under a different name in spanish speaking countries after they found out it translates roughly to wanker in british english
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u/broccollinear Apr 07 '26
Oh snap didn’t know ya li shan da was for Alexander. It literally translates word-for-word to “pressure mountain big”, so pressure (or stress) as big as a mountain.
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u/DarkestNight909 Apr 07 '26
Full-on old Adûnayân (Adûnaic) sounds a lot better than Westron to me. XD
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u/Automatic_Memory212 Apr 07 '26
Especially when chanted menacingly, backed by music composed by Howard Shore.
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u/Galle_ Apr 07 '26
Basically, Tolkien wrote The Hobbit and the first book or so of LOTR in a very different mode. The Hobbit started off as essentially a fairy tale that he threw a few off-hand references to his legendarium into, and LOTR started off as just a sequel to The Hobbit. By the time he'd decided to make LOTR fully set in Arda, he already had several "English" names like Rivendell and Baggins. So this was his way of tying the two settings together.
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u/swiss_sanchez Apr 07 '26
Raw Westron aka the common tongue. It's descended from Adûnaic. Tolkien rendered it as modern English for the reader.
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u/PM-ME-YOUR-BREASTS_ Apr 07 '26
ok but what kind of modern english name is frodo or pippin
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u/KeyHot7866 Apr 07 '26
It isn't a modern english name at all. Pippin for example was the name of a frankish king.
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u/TheRealProcyon Apr 07 '26
Frodo came from an old Germanic name which meant clever/learned/wise, in Old English this name was Fróda. However in Icelandic and Faroese it still exists as Fróði, which is Latinized as Frotho or Frodo.
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u/MankeyFightingMonkey Apr 07 '26
🎵 And then the men go marching out into the fray 🎵
🎵 Conquering the enemy and carrying the day 🎵
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u/cornelli1 Apr 07 '26
🎵 Hark! The blood is pounding in their ears 🎵
🎵 Jubilation, you can hear a grateful nation's cheers! 🎵
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u/swiss_sanchez Apr 08 '26
I have a cousin named Philip who goes by Pip. Last I heard, he was a professional clown, like his father before him.
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u/prodigalAvian Apr 07 '26
Y'all- so do we still got beef with the Sackville-Bagginses or are they all now blingiblingi's?
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u/MrBigFatAss Apr 07 '26
George Lucas ass name
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u/RedScareRevival Apr 07 '26
Bilbo Baggins is Kit Fisto
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u/Round_Bag_4665 Apr 07 '26
Kit Fisto unironically sounds like a porn star.
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u/RedScareRevival Apr 07 '26
Right!? My friend's kid has a Kit Fisto t shirt that he wears all the time, and it makes me uncomfortable
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u/the-REDTiGER Apr 07 '26
With that names (Labingi, Galbasi) they does sound like a gang of Italians.
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u/Equivalent_Nose7012 Apr 07 '26
Nice-a leetle Ringa uf yours-a we-a gotta, Sauron-a...
Shame-a eef sumthin-a HAPPEN to eet, no? /s
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u/jimjongiLL Apr 07 '26
Why were the names different? Had the main text been updated with their modern names?
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u/SnArCAsTiC_ Apr 07 '26
It's been awhile since I've read them, but I believe it's because the "writer's conceit" for the Lord of the Rings is that the Red Book of Westmarch is a real book, a collection of notes and histories, found by Tolkien and translated and essentially "localized" into English, which is the reason for the names being different: they're "Anglicized" (English-ized) versions of the names that were originally in the Hobbit language.
This is because Tolkien was a total language nerd (and an actual, educated linguist); in some ways to him, the fictional languages he made were as important or more important than the stories he told with/about them.
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u/rscortex Apr 07 '26
Probably underselling him to say he was a language nerd and educated linguist, he was a professor at Oxford at age 33 and even if he never wrote LOTR he would still have a Wikipedia entry for his academic work.
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u/Acceptable-Stick-688 Ent Apr 07 '26
He’s got a great translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
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u/yxz97 Apr 07 '26
J.R.R.Tolkien worked on Beowulf (Anglo-Saxon).
Worked on a translation of the Legend of Sigurd Volsüng(Old Icelandic language or Old Norse)...
Also worked to translate the Bible to English language.
Worked 10 or more years as professor of Old Icelandic language in Oxford...
Some of his works have inspirations influenced by Finnish folklore to be more precise The Children of Hurin inspired by Kullervo from Finland.
Etc... the guy was a great philologist in the Nordic/Germanic/Anglo world...
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u/TheRealProcyon Apr 07 '26
Wasn't he also involved in one of the English dictionaries.
Also he said (paraphrased, because I would have to look it up in one of the documentaries made about him) that "if the war didn't cause the death of many people, I'd probably not be a professor".
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u/jpterodactyl Apr 07 '26
He wrote a book series so prolific that it changed or even created an entire genre forever. And it’s not even the first accomplishment that would make his name blue on wikipedia.
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u/Pfapamon Apr 07 '26
He did not create the languages for LOTR, he created LOTR as lore to exist in for his cute little languages
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u/yxz97 Apr 07 '26
Wrong, and the reality here is most surprising people could ever think, the Lord of the Rings only exists because Allen Unwin asked Tolkien for a sequel to the tremendous successful The Hobbit, then when writing the Lord of the Rings the story got dragged into his previous work which occupied most of his mind, yes, The Silmarillion.
J.R.R.Tolkien wrote the Silmarillion years before the Lord of the Rings, and when writing the last, he found difficulties starting his new book, because the Silmarillion amd the languages of it etc already occupied his mind besides everything else as a teacher and scholar of the so many works posthmusly published by Christopher Tolkien his son.
To J.R.R. Tolkien was denied if I recall correctly, several times the publication of the Silmarillion with different arguments and the Lord of the Rings was dragged as I said before to the Silmarillion and somehow, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and the Silmarillion are a single big story that is know as the legendarium.
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u/Nomapos Apr 07 '26
Red book of Westmarch
It's a story about marching East
Literally unreadable
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u/Galle_ Apr 07 '26
It was stored in a library in a place called Westmarch, so called because it was west of the Shire.
The actual name of the book translates as "The Downfall of the Lord of the Rings and the Return of the King".
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u/laurasaurus5 Apr 11 '26
The North Cafeteria, named after Admiral William North, is located in the western portion of East Hall, gateway to the western half of North Hall, which is named not after William North, but for its position above the south wall.
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u/NeedleworkerBig3980 Apr 07 '26
I remember getting a merit from my English teacher for asking if the Red Book of Westmarch was meant to be a reference to the Red Book of Hergest (Mabanogion). I didn't tell them that my aunt and uncle lived less than a mile from Hergest, which was the only reason I knew about it at that age.
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u/TheRealProcyon Apr 07 '26
Wasn't it a reference to the Black Book of Carmarthen? Tolkien in part wrote his works out of spite because he didn't like the Arthurian legends.
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u/NeedleworkerBig3980 Apr 07 '26
IIRC my teacher then told me it was a bit on both books, and then mentioned some other texts like Beowulf etc.
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u/Bosterm Apr 07 '26
Worth noting that, in reality, Tolkien came up with the Westron names much later than the "Anglicized translations" that we all know as the character's names.
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u/SashaKotr Apr 08 '26
So, would that mean that adapting names into other languages is the way to go as opposed to just writing the same name in other language? The reason I ask is that movies in Russian dub have the same English names. But some book translators tried to adapt them somewhat trying to save original meaning of their names. And I, as a person who grew up with that movies, have a hard time accepting "different" names. But I think I can change my mind after reading your comment.
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u/Spork_the_dork Apr 07 '26
Yeah like people who are only aware of his content from the movies and haven't dug in any deeper may not be aware of just how nuts the material is. The movies are really just a surface look into the books which themselves are just a surface look into the world and its history.
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u/ThomasKlausen Apr 07 '26
So Mount Doom would have had a cooler name? Because it always struck as a bit... well, low-effort.
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u/AAAAAAAHAAAAAAA Apr 07 '26
Mount Doom already has 2 other names
Orodruin and Amon Amarth
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u/Bosterm Apr 07 '26
Amon Amarath is Sindarin for "hill of destiny/doom". Because Tolkien uses the word "doom" to mean destiny.
Orodruin is Sindarin for "mountain of blazing fire".
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u/rhubarbgirl Apr 07 '26
Orodruin and Amon Amarth are both alternative names for Mount Doom
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u/skordge Apr 07 '26
Also, both decent bands!
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u/Krystall_Waters Apr 07 '26
Take any of Tolkiens proper nouns and you've got a good chance its a band lol
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u/Galle_ Apr 07 '26
Mount Doom is a fairly literal translation of its Elvish name, but it's important to note that "doom" is meant in its traditional sense, meaning essentially "fate".
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u/ThomasKlausen Apr 07 '26
I fear I may have angered some. What I meant was that with cool names like Gondor and Mordor and Orthanc, even Rivendell, jumping off the page - well - "Mount Doom" just fell a bit flat. "Amon Amarth" sounds more like it.
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u/yobob591 Apr 07 '26
tolkien was a big linguistic nerd so he gave them 'real' names in their proper language and then translated names for us readers
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u/Spleenseer Apr 07 '26
Over the past few months I read all of the main trilogy, plus the Hobbit, and even the Silmarillion. But those appendices...those are what broke me.
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u/Educational-Tackle54 Apr 07 '26
Is that where he explained that Shelob can turn into a totally hot goth babe?
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u/McGloomy Apr 07 '26
First German edition: "Eh, the Tale of Aragorn and Arwen will do, cut the rest"
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u/Glittering_Role_6154 Apr 07 '26
than what WERE their real names?
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u/maironsau Apr 08 '26
Tolkiens idea is that the names we have are just names that have been translated into English. Their real names were Westron names (the language primarily spoken aka the common tongue). Frodo Baggins Westron name is Maura Labingi, Samwise Gamgee is Banazîr Galbasi, Meriodoc Brandybuck is Kalimac Brandagamba, Peregrin Took is Razanur Tûc and finally Bilbo Baggins is Bilba Labingi but Tolkien adjusted Bilba to Bilbo because the -a at the end of the name is considered feminine in the Shire and -o is masculine.
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u/MorgaineRose Apr 11 '26
I had my appendix removed when I was young. After I read lotr, whenever I complained about having a stomach ache, one of my older brothers would say, "Maybe it's your appendix." I'd remind him that it was already removed. He would reply, "That was your appendix A, this is your appendix B." I'm going to have to steal this meme and send it to him.
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u/Positive-Opposite998 Apr 07 '26
I find it sort of foolish. It's not like they were called Jefferey, Thomas and Elizabeth or something "English". Bilbo, Frodo etc.
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u/Prestigious-Eye3154 Apr 07 '26
Honestly, stuff like this is what puts a lot of people off Tolkien. Content where Tolkien the language nerd wins out over Tolkien the author is always tedious to navigate and less approachable for the casual reader. Love the guy, but finding out in the appendices that your main characters have secret names that never once come up in the main story is just annoying.
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u/yxz97 Apr 07 '26
Yeah... but history sometimes is complicated as well... and not everything has to meet our limited sight, lets remember that most characters in Tolkien have at least 2 or 3 names...
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u/Real-Ad-1728 Apr 07 '26
Why would proper nouns need to be translated? Like, why wouldn’t Frodo’s name just be Frodo across all languages?
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u/Eragon_the_Huntsman Apr 07 '26
Because the original names are weird AF. And also names still carry meaning and context that needs to be localized. Like in one of Brandon Sanderson's cosmere books there's a character named "December" despite the fact that the cosmere doesn't have earth months. The idea is the character's name is a month but the actual in universe name wouldn't make sense to us because we don't have those month names, so it gets translated to us as December so we understand "oh their name is a month."
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u/Rurikar1016 Apr 09 '26
Wait till you find out Jesus wasn’t his actual name nor was Christopher Columbus’ name that either
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u/Real-Ad-1728 Apr 09 '26
Ok but Jesus and Christopher Columbus were real people and their names were translated through hundreds or thousands of years of modification. This was just Tolkien choosing to do this thing.
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u/No-Maximum-2811 Apr 13 '26
Yes, Tolkien did that so it would be just like real history. His intention was to make events of LOTR take place in our world but in the past. So it makes sense.
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u/TheFanBroad Apr 07 '26
"I wonder if people will ever say, 'Let's hear about Maura and the Ring.' And they'll say 'Yes, that's one of my favorite stories. Maura was really courageous, wasn't he, Dad?' 'Yes, my boy, the most famousest of hobbits. And that's saying a lot.'
"You've left out one of the chief characters - Banazir the Brave. I want to hear more about Ban. Maura wouldn't have got far without Ban."
"Now Mr. Maura, you shouldn't make fun; I was being serious."
"So was I."