It's not always as easy as it looks to spot the origin of Tolkien's names. Bear in mind that he was a professional philologist, who could speak several languages apart from English. It's also worth bearing in mind that he had been working on the Elven languages for a good many years before he began to think of names for
The Lord of the Rings. He mentions the dangers of assuming that coincidental similarities are deliberate in a letter to a fan who thought that Moria was a reference to the Biblical land of Morīah.
Quote:
As for the 'land of Morīah' (note stress): that has no connexion (even externally) whatsoever. Internally there is no conceivable connexion between the mining of Dwarves and the story of Abraham. I utterly repudiate any such significances and symbolisms. My mind does not work that way; and (in my view) you are led astray by a purely fortuitous similarity, more obvious in spelling than speech, which cannot be justified from the real intended significance of my story.
Letter #297, drafts dated August 1967
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Samwise and Hamfast are taken directly from Old English, as are the names of the Rohirrim. Elven names and those of the kings of Gondor are usually in Sindarin, and have a purposed, often prophetic meaning in that language (such as
Arvedui - Last King). It would be extraordinarily difficult to invent a name that both obeyed the established grammar and vocabulary of Sindarin and had a purposed second meaning in modern English. Similarly, the sources and roots of Tolkien's languages were such that we will never know why he chose the words he did to fit their meanings. Even something that seems obvious, such as the similarity between Mordorian
nazg ('Ring') and the Gaelic word
nasc (Irish) or
nasg (Scottish) of the same meaning, though not explicitly denied by Tolkien as was the Moria/Morīah link, is never wholeheartedly supported by him either. In the same letter quoted above, he wrote:
Quote:
...it remains remarkable that nasc is the word for 'ring' in Gaelic... It also fits well with the meaning, since it also means, and prob. originally meant, a bond, and can be used for an 'obligation'. Nonetheless I only became aware, or again aware, of its existence recently in looking for something in a Gaelic dictionary. I have no liking at all for Gaelic from Old Irish downwards, as a language, but it is of course of great historical and philological interest, and I have at various times studied it.(With alas! very little success.) It is thus probable that nazg is actually derived from it, and this short, hard and clear vocable, sticking out from what seems to me (an unloving alien) a mushy language, became lodged in some corner of my linguistic memory.
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Something of the intellectual process that Tolkien went through in adopting words from the primary world into his legends and languages can be seen from one of the names for which he did give us the source. This was
Eärendil, one of the earliest in the
Silmarillion material to emerge, of which he wrote:
Quote:
The most important name in this connexion is Eärendil. This name is in fact (as is obvious) derived from A[nglo]-S[axon] éarendel. When first studying A-S professionally (1913 - ) - I had done so as a boyish hobby when supposed to be learning Greek and Latin - I was struck by the great beauty of this word (or name), entirely coherent with the normal style of A-S, but euphonic to a peculiar degree in that pleasing but not 'delectable' language. Also its form strongly suggests that it is in origin a proper name and not a common noun. This is borne out by the obviously related forms in other Germanic languages; from which amid the confusions and debasements of late traditions it at least seems certain that it belonged to astronomical-myth, and was the name of a star or star-group. To my mind the A-S uses* seem plainly to indicate that it was a star presaging the dawn (at any rate in the English tradition): that is what we now call Venus: the morning-star as it may be seen rising brilliantly in the dawn, before the actual rising of the Sun. That is at any rate how I took it. Before 1914 I wrote a 'poem' upon Earendel who launched his ship like a bright spark from the havens of the Sun. I adopted him into my mythology - in which he became a prime figure as a mariner, and eventually as a herald star, and a sign of hope to men. Aiya Eärendil Elenion Ancalima (II 329) 'hail Earendil brightest of stars' is derived at long remove from Éala Éarendel engla beorhtast. But the name could not be adopted just like that: it had to be accommodated into the Elvish linguistic situation, at the same time as a place for this person was made in legend. From this, far back in the history of 'Elvish', which was beginning, after many tentative starts in boyhood, to take definite shape at the time of the name's adoption, arose eventually (a) the C.E. stem *AYAR 'Sea', primarily applied to the Great Sea of the West, lying between Middle-earth and Aman the Blessed Realm of the Valar; and (b) the element or verbal base (N)DIL, 'to love, be devoted to' - describing the attitude of one to a person, thing, course or occupation to which one is devoted for its own sake.
* Its earliest recorded A-S form is earendel (oer-), later earendel, eorendel. Mostly in glosses on jubar=leoma; also on aurora. But also in Blick[ling] Hom[ilies] 163, se níwa éorendel app[lied] to St. John the Baptist; and most notably Crist 104, éala! éarendel engla beorhtast ofer middangeard monnum sended. Often supposed to apply to Christ (or Mary), but comparison with Bl. Homs. suggests that it refers to the Baptist. The lines refer to a herald and divine messenger, clearly not the soðfæsta sunnan leoma=Christ
Ibid
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As we can see from the above, the best that anyone would be doing in taking words from English (or any other natural language) and linking them with words in Tolkien's languages that sound similar would be guessing (with little hope of success, unless the enquirer shared Tolkien's knowledge of the subject). Even going back to the earliest words recorded in
The History of Middle-earth and following their development would furnish little more than slightly more informed guesswork. This was the sort of thing that Tolkien did as part of his job, so you can bet that if you can think of an obscure connection he had at least one twice as murky from which to work. In any case, the invention of languages owes as much to the mind of their creator as it does to the influences on which he drew.
