Quote:
Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin
On nomenclature:
This is an area which I thinks provides substantial evidence that this show is not "in good hands" at all, notwithstanding the comments of assorted podcasters whom Amazon lavishly junketed. Look at the names for their "Harfoot" protohobbits. It goes without saying that these names of Shire type would be linguistically impossible in the Second Age.
But it also seems at least as blatant, even if they want to roll with a conscious anachronism, that there is not a thought process involved with sufficient spark to understand even the nature of those names: just chopping and reassembling Brandybuck and Proudfoot- have these nimrods no idea where those names came from and why they are as they are? Was there no knife in the drawer sharp enough to go find a Warwick* telephone directory and pull some Hobbity names from the source?
Oh, yes- what the heck is a woman with the the Welsh name Bronwyn doing in Middle-earth?
*"West Midlands" (i.e. the Birmingham conurbation) wouldn't really work any more
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I did a post on names in the Vanity Fair thread
here and basically agree with you, though their Elvish language words (Arondir, Tirharad, possibly Carinė) are at least plausible.
In recent days the official Twitter account has been attaching more names to the posters. We have Harfoots "Poppy Proudfellow", "Marigold Brandyfoot", "Largo Brandyfoot", "Sadoc Burrows", and a mortal boy associated with Bronwyn named "Theo".
I feel like Theo has been discussed already - it looks like they've just grabbed a random Rohirric sound, just like they apparently did with Bronwyn. Really not fond of that.
The Harfoots are better. Largo is a bit weird to me because a song by that name was one of the first couple I learnt on the keyboard, but none of the forenames stands out as super unlikely (unlike Elanor/Nori). Burrows I think is straight from Tolkien, and Proudfellow fits right in with the English-language Hobbit names. It's kind of a shame their "bad in three different ways" name happens to be the lead Harfoot character.
Given how easy it is to get Hobbit names 'right' (literally just Flower Ruralphrase will do you), I don't think this indicates their name-game has gotten any better.
hS