~*Boredom*~

"He's a young man of ambition. We see he recognizes he can do things that no one else can do in the realm because he has Vhagar."

however. when the only thing under all the scarring is more scarring. when there's nothing of the before self left at all. when there was a precipice, and they tumbled over it, and even if they got back up they'll never heal right.

I really don't like the short-haired elves in the Rings of power. They just don't feel very elvish or tolkien. They remind me of pictures from behind the scenes of the Hobbit where the elves are trying on their costumes or are practicing for a scene. They feel unfinised. Like they all forgot to put on their wigs.

No, they have Westron names and English names.

What you’ve got to understand is that everything Tolkien wrote was him pretending to merely translate ancient documents. He was writing as if the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings were actually been written by Bilbo, Frodo, and Sam (or Bilba, Maura, and Ban) and he was just some random contemporary academic translating it all into English for us. 

There are many languages in his books, but generally speaking, everything written in English in the books is a translation of the language “Westron.” Therefore any names that come from Westron, he translated. Names coming from other languages, like Sindarin, he left as they were. Why? IDK. Maybe because the stories are from a hobbit perspective and hobbits speak Westron, so he wanted the Westron parts to sound familiar and the other languages/names to remain foreign? 

“But Mirkwoodest!” you cry, “The word ‘hobbit’ isn’t an English word! And the names Bilbo Baggins, Frodo Baggins, Samwise Gamgee, Peregrin Took, and Meriadoc Brandybuck” all sounds super weird and not like English at all!”

Psych! They are in English! (Or Old English, German, or Norse.) Once again you underestimate what a nerd Tolkien was. Let me break it down: 

In Westron, hobbits are actually called “kuduk,” which means “hole-dweller,” so for an English translation, Tolkien called them “hobbits” which is a modernization of the Old English word “holbytla” which comes from “Hol” (hole) and “Bytla”(builder). 

“Maura” is a Westron name which means “Wise.” Weirdly enough, “Frodo” is an actual Proto-Germanic name that actual people used to have and it means the same thing. 

“Banazîr” is Westron for “half-wise, or simple.” In Proto Germanic, the prefix “Sam” means half, and wise is obviously a word we still use. 

“Razanur” means “Traveler” or “Stranger” which is also the meaning of the word “Peregrin(e)” This one is a twofer because  “Razar” means “a small red apple” and in English so does “Pippin.”

“Kalimac” apparently is a meaningless name in Westron, but the shortened form “Kali” means “happy,” so Jirt decided his nickname would be “Merry” and chose the really obscure ancient Celtic name “Meriodoc” to match. 

Jirt chose to leave “Bilba” almost exactly the same in English, but he changed the ending to an “O” because in Westron names ending in “a” are masculine. 

I’m not going to go on and talk about the last names but those all have special meanings too (except Tûk, which is too iconic to change more than the spelling of, apparently). 

The Rohirrim were also Westron speakers first and foremost, so their names are also “translations” into Old English and Proto-Germanic words, i.e. “Eowyn”  is a combination of “Eoh” (horse) and “Wynn” (joy/bliss). 

“Rohirrim/Rohan” are Sindarin words, but in the books, they call themselves the “Éothéod” which is an Old English/Norse combo that means “horse people.” Tolkien tells us in the “Peoples of Middle Earth” that the actual Westron for “Éothéod” is Lohtûr, which means that Eowyn and Eomer’s names, which come from the same root word, must also start with the letter L. 

The names of all the elves, dwarves, Dunedain, and men from Gondor are not English translations, since they come from root words other than Westron. 

The takeaway from this is that when a guy whose first real job was researching the history and etymology of words of Germanic origin beginning with the letter “W” writes a book, you can expect this kind of tomfoolery.

Notes: Sorry I said “Razal” instead of “Razar” in my original post I’m a fraud. 

Further Reading: 

- You are the only one capable of building complex, planned structures. You are alone. You don’t remember building the temples or houses you come across.

- You are alone. You are the only one like you in the entire world.

- Villagers keep their hands clasped beneath long robes. You’ve never seen a villager’s hand. Sometimes you wonder if they have them at all.

- The villagers all have the same empty green eyes. They have completely different anatomy from you. They’re humanoid, but not human. Are you?

- The undead, however, have your face and your clothes. They seem closer to you than the villagers.

- You’re alone. You are the only one like you in the world.

- All caves are the same. You’ve been in a ravine like this one. Maybe you’ve been in this ravine. You’ve visited it countless times. No matter which way you turn, you stumble into it.

- No matter which way you turn, there’s more caves. Sometimes there’s torches. You’ve been here. You still can’t get out. Sometimes there’s not torches. Sometimes you give up escape and decide to explore ever deeper.

- You wonder if you’ve ever seen the surface, or if you were born in these caves with a vibrant imagination.

- You are the only living thing in this world. 

- You come across dusty, abandoned mineshafts and rusty minecarts with loot at the bottom. You don’t remember building these or leaving anything behind. You wouldn’t shore up the walls with wooden posts. You know this world better than that.

- Then why does shoring up the walls seem logical? You don’t remember a world before this one. Why does this one feel so strange, sometimes even irrational?

- You’re alone. You are the only one like you in the world. You’re being watched. 

- The caves aren’t yours. You’re the only one in them, but they’re not yours. They belong to something else - someone else, and you both know it.

- You’re alone in the world. You’re not alone in the caves. Their breathing and occasional humming echo in the stony corridors.

- Maybe the caves themselves are breathing. Singing.

- You are the only living thing in this world. The world itself, however, is alive.

- You make up stories for everything you build. You forget they’re just stories.

- The world sings to you. You clutch its music close and hope it never stops. In the silence after each song, you’re alone.

- You’re alone. You are the only one like you in the world, for this world is honest. You are being watched, for you are not.

- You’re the only living thing in this world. The world is alive. You are not alive the same way.

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