One of the ballsiest things Tolkien ever did was write 473k words about some hobbits called frodo, sam, merry, and pippin and then write in the appendices that their names are actually maura, ban, kali, and razal.
This just in: Eowyn and Eomer’s names actually start with the letter “L.” [source for other nerds]
#wait so they have hobbitish names and common names?
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:
Rohirric , Westron
I’m having a stroke
One thing that recurs on me a lot is that Tolkien had painted himself into a corner and decided to stay in it (which is understandable because of who he was) but ultimately, hobbits alone of all his “races” were written to have no native language. Some words are unique to their dialect - mathom, faunt, tween - but otherwise the only language they speak and write in is Westron, their linguistic roots being shared with the Rohirrim. The “Maura” type names are thus partly a reconciliation with the proto-Rohirric culture as he had written it, as the “Frodo” type names have roots that sound very British English to us - Merry Brandybuck is incredibly British English if you think about it - and it seems like he wanted to sieve out some of the self-referential Englishness to sand over the rough join he’d made between the modern Englishness of Hobbits, which oozes out of them like jam, and the Recently-Angled Anglo-Saxonness of the Rohirrim. How DO these conceptions meld into a shared common language? You can imagine him pacing and fretting about this. Then his good idea: he claimed he had simply translated the hobbit names - one of the most distinctive markers of their culture - to give them that modern English feeling, but this was deceptive of him, and their actual names were far more consistent with his plan for the Rohirric language. Phew!
…personally I would have said I was wrong about the shared linguistic roots with Rohirric and had been mistaken. And hobbits had their own native language actually. They are just absurdly good at languages and translation actually. They just don’t speak it much to others because nobody else ever learns it and there’s no point being a little bitch if people can’t overhear you. It’s all an extended bit, actually. “Yeah no we don’t have a native language we can only cast shade in Westron” They were lying. They were setting up a bit for later. The punchline usually never comes but WHEN IT DOES
Like it’s actually fairly easy to do. Even the capital city, Michel Delving (Great Delving or Great Burrow maybe) is connected enough to a common dialect that they can get away with it. Thain, faunt, tween and mathom all hint at the sounds and shape and priorities of their language, but can arguably be waved away as obscure dialect words.
The only flaw in this generational in-joke is that nobody else cares about hobbits. At all. They could plant entire dictionaries and lexicons in Minas Tirith and Rivendell and nobody would even pick them up. The bit is ultimately no fun at all. BUT IT MIGHT BE SOME DAY,
Preserved for immense historical value.
