What Makes the Names of Middle-earth So Fitting? Elements of Style in the Namecraft of J. R. R. Tolkien

Abstract

What makes a name ‘fitting’? Or, in closely related formulations, what makes a name ‘sound right’ or ‘ring true’? From the Cratylus to present-day studies in literary onomastics, the usual answer is that a name is fitting, right, or true for the person, place, or thing that bears it. The names in J. R. R. Tolkien’s fiction are fitting in this sense, reflecting by way of their source words, sound symbolism, or etymology some characteristic of their designees. At the same time, however, Tolkien insists that a name fit not only its designee, but also the phonological and morphological style of the nomenclature to which it belongs, as well as the linguistic scheme of his invented world. These elements of style are determined at the level of the nomenclature as a whole, independently from concerns with the motivation of individual names. The personal and place names of Middle-earth are thus fitting in more than the usual sense.

Keywords:

• J. R. R. Tolkien
• literary onomaturgy
• literary onomastics
• names in fantasy literature

Notes

1 David Lyle Jeffrey, for example, probably goes too far with his glosses on Aragorn and Arwen. As noted above, both names are derived from stems and bases in Quenya and Sindarin. Ignoring their roots in the Elvish tongues, Jeffrey begins by identifying the shared first syllable in the two names, ar, as ‘one of the most richly meaningful monosyllabic words in the Old English language’ and he associates it with cognates from Greek, Gothic, Old Norse, and other Scandinavian tongues (2004: 71). He then defines the semantic range of these cognates, which apply to a person (messenger, apostle, angel, minister), a quality of character (honor, dignity, glory, magnificence, honesty, reverence), and a personal action (kindness, mercy, service, succor). He relates the last two syllables in Aragorn’s name, agorn, to OE agangan, which means ‘to pass by unnoticed,’ ‘to surpass,’ ‘to travel quickly,’ ‘to come forth,’ and ‘to come to pass.’ Turning next to Arwen, Jeffrey connects the second syllable of her name with OE wyn, which means ‘joy’, to yield ‘the joy of ar.’ The OE word can also be associated with meanings such as ‘prospect,’ ‘conviction,’ ‘belief,’ and ‘expectation,’ and can furthermore be used in the sense of ‘faith’ and ‘hope’ (71–72). Jeffrey lists these qualities in Latin and illustrates them with short snippets of texts that range from the opening words of The Silmarillion to ancient texts such as the Bible, the Odyssey, Beowulf, and Anglo-Saxon religious poetry.

2 Tolkien’s complaints here echo what Michel Grimaud once disparagingly referred to as ‘treasure-digging’ in literary onomastics (1989: 23).

3 Contrary to Jeffrey’s glosses, which seek to establish semantic associations between the Elvish names of Aragorn and Arwen with words in various ancient tongues, Shippey’s etymological analyses are consistent with Tolkien’s own strictures.

4 What Tolkien describes here is similar to what I call ‘blank association,’ a relationship in which the sound and form of an invented name resembles that of a pre-existing vocable, but without any semantic or symbolic significance (Robinson, 2010a: 106).

5 I first sketched out Tolkien’s notion of linguistic style and its applicability to invented nomenclatures in a study of Lovecraft’s teratonyms (Robinson 2010b: 128–129).

6 This formulation recalls Valesio’s argument that the aesthetic quality of a neologism can be judged only in terms of its ‘distance’ from the ordinary words and names of a given lexicon, which furnish the norm upon which any comparisons are to be made (1973: 28–53). While distance and estrangement are important, Tolkien’s comments on Welsh, as well as Valesio’s own notion of ‘phonological admissibility,’ emphasize that proximity and familiarity are equally important factors.

7 Tolkien’s poem, which he uses to illustrate the poetic potential of his invented language, appears in ‘A Secret Vice’ (2006b: 213–214).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Christopher L Robinson

Christopher L. Robinson teaches and directs English studies at HEC-Paris. His research focuses on how writers experiment with and experience language. Onomastic invention in fantasy literature is particularly conducive to this kind of experimentation, as it combines wordplay with experiences related to gender, childhood, affect and the body. His studies of names in the fiction of Ursula K. Le Guin, Lord Dunsany, and H. P. Lovecraft have appeared in the journals Extrapolation, Children’s Literature, and Names.

Correspondence to: Christopher L. Robinson, CREA/Department of Languages and Cultures, HEC-Paris, 1 rue de la Libération, 78351 Jouy en Josas CEDEX, France. Email: [email protected]