Quote:
Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin
Although I do wish the author had bothered to learn enough about Tolkien to know that he never went by "John." To his family he was "Ronald," to Lewis and other friends he was "Tollers". About as egregious as calling Lewis "Clive."
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Though to be fair, while if I see John Tolkien my first instinct is to think it refers to Father John, I have just been re-reading the letters and in no309 he says:
" But for myself I remained John. Ronald was for my near kin. My friends at school, Oxford and later have called me John (or occasionally John Ronald or J.Rsquared)..".
Of course that is contradicted by the notes that he signed few letters John and asks Rayner Unwin to call him Ronald in letter 334. And the fact that men of his generation in the public school / university environment especially would probably have used surnames /nicknames. Even in my day at a comprehensive decades later I can't recall the boys using christian names among themselves.
I am not accusing him of lying but names are a complex thing in Tolkien's world and it is often the case that certain names are for certain people / situations only and so it was perhaps for Tolkien. Having a four syllable first name myself I have given up trying to impose its use in it's entirety on everyone (though I mind a little if people shorten it without asking) but the resulting instant familiarity does seem a little hasty as Treebeard would say! Maybe my English stuffiness over names is a result of having lost the distinction between the polite and familiar forms of "you". When I lived in France you moved to first names quickly but to "tutoyer" someone was a significant mark of intimacy.