I must congratulate
elempi for the wisdom of this poll. He omitted orc and troll, therbye limiting any potential problems caused by the likes of spammers, trolls (hey, there's a real identification
), monkeys, hacks, and just your plain garden-variety jokers. Sometimes, you just have to ruin some people's fun.
I must ponder the inclusion of ent, though. Not because ents aren't a race in Middle-earth, but because I wonder whether
ent includes
entwives. I notice that
elempi carefully sidestepped this issue of gender inclusiveness by using
human rather than the term Tolkien himself used,
man, or
men. But since entwives are differentiated from ents, does that not suggest that
ent refers only to the male form of the species? (Assuming that trees have male and female gender and not some other biological expression of reproduction).
After all, we don't have elfwives or dwarfwives. (Do we even have female dwarves?) What does this naming suggest about the race of ents? Does the poll need a separate choice of
entwife?
I notice also another omission, one probably due to the enigmatic difficulty of categorizing his race. And that of his wife. I speak, obviously, of the omission of
Tom Bombadil and
Goldberry from this list. Are they a race unto themselves or do they belong with the Ainur?
