Tolkien naming his characters

Music:

[alanhadipulungan]

-Gríma Wormtongue
-Nazgul
-Mordor
-Baggins ??
-Mount Doom
-Mirkwood
-Faramir Boromir
-Treebeard
-Shelob
-Saruman
-Bilbo
-Frodo

[nightsong]

We forget that all the scary things from ancient myth and legend had names in their native languages that mostly translated to "evil spirit" and "thing that kills you."

[sleepy_jean]

"Merry is short for Meriadoc. Pippin is short for Peregrin. Sam is short for Samwise"
"Is Frodo short for something?"
"No. He's short for everything."

[ashketchum]

"This character is Fëanor, which means Spirit of Fire in one of the languages I invented. His name symbolizes his personality, creative spirit and destructive tendencies."
"This character is Treebeard, because he is a tree with a beard."

[ottovonbearsmark]

I mean the man made a world based in Anglo-Saxon traditions, he had to follow the classic Anglo-Saxon naming convention of: “Call thing what it is.”

[pippi]

Sauron and his sidekick Saruman
Hitler and his sidekick Himmler

[OctagonalSquare]

Tolkien calling himself “John Ronald” in frustration is one of the funniest parts of

[manchannel]

Given the Saxon naming conventions that led to names like "Staveleigh hill" which translates as hill where stakes/staves grow hill" or the "river avon" which translates as "river river", none of this is surprising.

[RJKilroy]

Truly inspiring to see how the great mind of Jolkien Rolkien Rolkien Tolkien worked

[kino_enjoyer]

Your impression of Tolkien is so goofy but in a really heartwarming way. Like that one teacher who is chill no matter what bs is happening in the school

[HeavyMetalisLaw]

On a side note, hearing the Shire theme away from the film footage just emphasises how beautiful a piece of music it is.

[Gonzalouchikari]

In the spanish translation of the name "Treebeard", they mix the words "barba" (beard) and "árbol" (tree) in the most perfect way: "bárbol".

[uppishcub]

You joke, but coming up with names is hard. The fact that he came up with so many cool sounding names is a feat. Half the time I just end up digging through a book of baby names or misspelling latin words. The other is me spending hours mixing random syllables.

[Gameinger]

unironically this is extremely realistic worldbuilding. even irl we just name everything literally what it is. most cities in their native language are just a geographical feature + port/settlement or a local tribe name + land. Heck, this is where the entire country of Portugal gets its name. As well as the countries ending with "ia" and "stan".

[kapellmeisterr]

"don't worry, o have the trusted council of my most precious friend, Backstaberius Falsehoodspeaker

[Rutgerman]

And then in a galaxy brain move no writer has topped yet, he then casually drops that EVERYONE has completely different names and he's just writing as if he's translating ancient myths and sagas to comtemporary English for us

[vandalman]

All the people who can’t tell that this is clearly done lovingly is wild

[blueshit]

"hmm, I do need a name for a woman to beat the Lord of the Nazi-Ghouls... ah yes! of course, I-Win, that should do it!"

[stephenwood]

Don't forget that Tolkein claimed that LOTR was a translation of the Red Book of Westmarch, and, translated back into their original languages, a lot of real towns and places sound very high fantasy indeed. Aylesbury is "Dreadfort", for example, and Crawley is "the Glade of Crows".

[altEFG]

Thing is, the names we read in the book are not the ACTUAL names. In Tolkien's mind, what he wrote down was a translation from Westron, which was kind of a Lingua Franca of Middle-Earth. The "real" name of Frodo Baggins is Maura Labingi, for instance. And even when "translating', he didn't just come up with gibberish. Quote:

"The name Maura has the element maur- (wise, experienced), which Tolkien equated to the Germanic element frod- of the same meaning".

So, first he made up fictional languages, then created a complete fictional mythology and several millennia worth of history, then came up with characters and plot outline for The Lord of the Rings story set in this fictional world, then adapted what would sound like complete made up gibberish without reading through tons of appendices into something that sounds like Anglo-Saxon and Germanic mythology and language. Better yet, he encouraged translators not just to translate, but adapt his book in a way that would sound "native". For example, in certain Russian translations Frodo Baggins is translated as "Frodo Sumkin" or "Frodo Torbins", both of which is based on Russian word for a "bag". Which, in turn, makes it sound like it's the name of a villager, as opposed to something like "Aragorn", which sounds epic and big.

Update: "Sumkin" is actually from a joke dub of the movie, but "Torbins" is from one of the Russian translation of the books, and I can't quite remember, but I'm sure I saw a few other version based on the same principle.