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if the Elvish name _Imladris_ and the Westron translation
_Karningul_ had both been left unchanged. But to refer to Rivendell as
Imladris was as if one now was to speak of Winchester as Camelot, except that
the identity was certain, while in Rivendell there still dwelt a lord of
renown far older than Arthur would be, were he still king at
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Winchester today.
The name of the Shire (_Sûza_) and all other places of die Hobbits have thus
been Englished.
This was seldom difficult, since such names were commonly made up of elements
similar to those used in our simpler English place-names; either words still
current like _hill_ or _field_; or a little worn down like _ton_ beside
_town_. But some were derived, as already noted, from old hobbit-words no
longer in use, and these have been represented by similar English things, such
as
_wich_, or _bottle_ 'dwelling', or _michel_ 'great'.
In the case of persons, however, Hobbit-names in the Shire and in Bree were
for those days peculiar, notably in the habit that had grown up, some
centuries before this time, of having inherited names for families. Most of
these surnames had obvious meanings in the current language, being derived
from jesting nicknames, or from place-names, or (especially in Bree) from the
names of plants and trees. Translation of these presented little difficulty;
but there remained one or two older names of forgotten meaning, and these I
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have been content to anglicize in spelling: as
Took for _Tûk_, or Boffin for _Bophîn_.
I have treated Hobbit first-names, as far as possible, in the same way. To
their maid-
children Hobbits commonly gave the names of flowers or jewels. To their
man-children they usually gave names that had no meaning at all in their daily
language; and some of their women's names were similar. Of this kind are
Bilbo, Bungo, Polo, Lotho, Tanta, Nina, and so on. There are many inevitable
but accidental resemblances to names that we now have or know: for instance
Otho, Odo, Drogo, Dora, Cora, and the like. These names I have retained,
though I have usually anglicized them by altering their endings, since in
Hobbit-names _a_ was a masculine ending, and _o_ and _e_
were feminine.
In some old families, especially those of Fallohide origin such as the Tooks
and the Bolgers, it was, however, the custom to give high-sounding
first-names. Since most of these seem to have been drawn from legends of the
past, of Men as well as of Hobbits, and many while now meaningless to Hobbits
closely resembled the names of Men in the Vale of Anduin, or in Dale, or in
the Mark, I
have turned them into those old names, largely of Frankish and Gothic origin,
that are still used by us or are met in our histories. I have thus at any rate
preserved the often comic contrast between the first-names and surnames, of
which the Hobbits themselves were well aware. Names of classical origin have
rarely been used; for the nearest equivalents to Latin and Greek in Shire-
lore were the Elvish tongues, and these the Hobbits seldom used in
nomenclature. Few of them at any time knew 'the languages of the kings', as
they called them.
The names of the Bucklanders were different from those of the rest of the
Shire. The folk of the Marish and their offshoot across the Brandywine were in
many ways peculiar, as has been told.
It was from the former language of the southern Stoors, no doubt, that they
inherited many of their very odd names. These I have usually left unaltered,
for if queer now, they were queer in their own day. They had a style that we
should perhaps feel vaguely to be Celtic elements in
England, I have sometimes imitated the latter in my translation. Thus Bree,
Combe (Coomb), Archet, and Chetwood are modelled on relics of British
nomenclature, chosen according to sense: _bree_
hill, _chet_ "wood*. But only one personal name has been altered in this way.
Meriadoc was chosen to fit the fact that this character's shortened name.
Kali, meant in the Westron 'jolly, gay', though it was actually an
abbreviation of the now unmeaning Buckland name Kalimac.
I have not used names of Hebraic or similar origin in my transpositions.
Nothing in Hobbit-
names corresponds to this element in our names. Short names such as Sam, Tom,
Tim, Mat were common as abbreviations of actual Hobbit-names, such as Tomba,
Tolma, Matta, and the like. But Sam and his father Ham were really called Ban
and Ran. These were shortenings of _Banazîr_ and _Ranugad_, originally
nicknames, meaning 'half-wise, simple' and 'stay-at-home', but being words
that had fallen out of colloquial use they remained as traditional names in
certain families. I have therefore tried to preserve these features by using
Samwise and Hamfast, modernizations of ancient
English _samwís_ and _hámfoest_ which corresponded closely in meaning.
Having gone so far in my attempt to modernize and make familiar the language
and names of
Hobbits, I found myself involved in a further process. The Mannish languages
that were related to the Westron should, it seemed to me, be turned into forms
related to English. The language of
Rohan I have accordingly made to resemble ancient English, since it was
related both (more distantly) to the Common Speech, and (very closely) to the
former tongue of the northern Hobbits, and was in comparison with the Westron
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archaic. In the Red Book it is noted in several places that when Hobbits heard
the speech of Rohan they recognized many words and felt the language to be
akin to their own, so that it seemed absurd to leave the recorded names and
words of the Rohirrim in a wholly alien style.
In several cases I have modernized the forms and spellings of place-names in
Rohan: as in
_Dunharrow_ or _Snowbourne_; but I have not been consistent, for I have
followed the Hobbits. They
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ices%20And%20Index.txt altered the names that they heard in the same way, if
they were made of elements mat they recognized, or if they resembled
place-names in the Shire; but many they left alone, as I have done, for
instance, in _Edoras_ 'the courts'. For the same reasons a few personal names
have also been modernized, as Shadowfax and Wormtongue.
This assimilation also provided a convenient way of representing the peculiar
local hobbit-
words that were of northern origin. They have been given the forms that lost
English words might well have had, if they had come down to our day. Thus
_mathom_ is meant to recall ancient English
_máthm_, and so to represent the relationship of the actual Hobbit _kast_ to
R. _kastu_. Similarly
_smial_ (or smile) 'burrow' is a likely form for a descendant of _smygel_, and
represents wen the relationship of Hobbit _tran_ to R. _trahan_. _Sméagol_ and
_Déagol_ are equivalents made up in the same way for the names _Trahald_
'burrowing, worming in', and _Nahald_ 'secret' in the
Northern tongues.
The still more northerly language of Dale is in this book seen only in the
names of the
Dwarves that came from that region and so used the language of the Men there,
taking their 'outer'
names in that tongue. It may be observed that in this book as in _The Hobbit_
the form _dwarves_
is used, although the dictionaries tell us that the plural of _dwarf_ is [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]