Belladonna Took

[Lord of Angmar]

I did not know where to post this insight other than as a new thread. It is a brief and trivial point, but one that had bothered me.

Belladonna Took is Bilbo Baggins's mother. It always bothered me that this was her name, since Belladonna is so obviously a word of Italian origin, and thus is at odds with the name scheme of the hobbits, and with the language patterns of Middle Earth itself. Belladonna literally means beautiful woman in Italian.

[Estelyn Telcontar]

Actually, "Belladonna" fits in quite well with the Hobbit custom of naming girls after flowers - it's common use in English is this:

1 : an Old World poisonous plant (Atropa belladonna) of the nightshade family having purple or green bell-shaped flowers, glossy black berries, and root and leaves that yield atropine -- called also deadly nightshade
2 : a medicinal extract (as atropine) from the belladonna plant
(Merriam-Webster OnLine)

However, that raises a new question - why on earth would Tolkien name the mother of his hero "deadly nightshade"??

There's another interesting cross-lingual connection of which Tolkien may have been aware as a linguist - the German name for the same plant is "Tollkirsche". That begins with the same word as his originally German ancestors' name, "Tollkühn". ("Toll" originally means "mad" or "wild", "Tollkühn" means "daredevil, reckless, foolhardy".) I wonder if JRRT was playing with that reference?

[Sharkû]

Esty's right, naming girls after flowers is very common for hobbits. What's more, the literal meaning of the name is simply something like 'pretty lady', so that is not too strange either. The quite different nature of the plant on its inside may or may not have been intented by the people giving her that name; but from what we know hobbits weren't very careful with that.

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

I think it's more than likely that Tolkien intended the connection that Estelyn's spotted. He certainly knew plenty of German, and was particularly interested his family's name and history. I think there's a clearly intentional double, possibly even treble meaning here: there's the typically hobbitish use of a floral name that sounds nice without any concern for (or knowledge of) its real meaning, parodied in belladonna being a poisonous plant. Allied with this we have the Italian meaning ('beautiful lady'), which is an appropriate one for a daughter's name; and then we have the typically Tolkienish linguistic joke, referring to the Tookish penchant for 'foolhardy' adventuring.

I think that this is an excellent example of how significant a name can be in Tolkien's writing. He can often be caught making sly professional in-jokes, such as in calling his most famous dragon Smaug, which means '[he/she/it] crawled through a hole' in an assumed primitive Germanic dialect. Sometimes he's more obvious, such as in the name of another dragon: Chrysophylax Dives, which is Latin for 'rich money-lover'.

<font size=1 color=339966>[ 9:12 AM December 13, 2003: Message edited by: The Squatter of Amon Rûdh ]

[Sharkû]

I didn't rule out the possibility that Tolkien had that in mind. My point is rather that within the fictional reality, the name would likely be bereft of any meaning except that of the flower. Only more 'scholarly' hobbits might have known that Belladonna's true name was not Westron in origin (it likely wasn't, being that _Belladonna_ is Italian), and that it had a meaning of its own in that language.

<font size=1 color=339966>[ 10:06 AM December 13, 2003: Message edited by: Sharkû ]

[Estelyn Telcontar]

Another possible layer of meaning has occurred to me – herbal medicines such as belladonna can be beneficial or poisonous; it’s all a matter of dosage. Could Tolkien be suggesting (rather tongue-in-cheek) that a little bit of such a lively girl as Belladonna Took goes a long way – and too much can be lethal? [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img] [img]smilies/tongue.gif[/img]

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

I didn't rule out the possibility that Tolkien had that in mind.

Of course you didn't, Sharkû, and I'd have been amazed if you had. I was just jumping on Estelyn's bandwagon to make myself look cleverer.

Estelyn makes yet another excellent point above: Tolkien describes Belladonna Took as "remarkable", and that can mean a wealth of things, not all of them pleasant. Also the Tookish quality of reckless and inquisitive adventurousness, while certainly beneficial in small doses, can be lethal if too-liberally indulged. Pippin's stone-dropping incident in Moria is a prime example.

<font size=1 color=339966>[ 1:19 PM December 13, 2003: Message edited by: The Squatter of Amon Rûdh ]

[Lalaith]

an assumed primitive Germanic dialect

Ahem.
Smaug is Icelandic, and while certainly Germanic it is a language, not a dialect. Primitive? Assumed? A matter of opinion perhaps...

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

"The dragon bears as a name - a pseudonym - the past tense of the primitive Germanic verb Smugan, to squeeze through a hole: a low philological jest." J.R.R. Tolkien, letter #25.

Now, I'm not saying that this means you're wrong, Lalaith: even Homer nods from time to time. That was my source, though, so you can blame him if I do Icelandic an injustice.

<font size=1 color=339966>[ 8:47 PM December 13, 2003: Message edited by: The Squatter of Amon Rûdh ]

[Kalimac]

Estelyn - sehr toll! (Sorry, had to say it [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]).

All this discussion reminds me of Bierce's "Devil's Dictionary" - at least, the entry which runs:

BELLADONNA, n. In Italian a beautiful lady, in English a deadly poison. A striking example of the essential identity of the two tongues.

To be honest, though, I think that the fact that Belladonna shares her name with a poisonous flower probably doesn't have much significance - I'd suspect that Tolkien chose it large because it's pretty and it's a flower-name - and those are both things that the hobbits leaned towards when naming their daughters. The reason I'd suspect this is that in a society where a lot of children are named after flowers, a lot of them will end up being named (intentionally or not) after something poisonous, simply because an awful lot of flowers are poisonous or otherwise bad for the health - if not to humans, than to animals.

If you look at the Baggins and Took family trees, one sweep through will give you Belladonna, Pimpernel, Pervinca (a variation on Periwinkle), Lobelia, Myrtle, Lily, Poppy, and Pansy. You wouldn't want to ingest any of these things, and some of them can have pretty nasty effects, though Belladonna is one of the stronger ones (several of these plants can kill animals). Even some kinds of marigold have to be watched out for.

Now, I'll grant you that Lobelia's name is probably not an accident [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img] - but she's a much bigger player in the books than Belladonna is - Belladonna is dead before "The Hobbit" opens, and is only mentioned three times, and those briefly. I'd venture to guess that initially Tolkien put about as much effort into naming her as he did to naming Poppy, Pervinca, Pimpernel and so forth.

Anyway, that's what I'd guess it is. Besides, reading interpretations into people's names can get a bit scary after a while. Surely the fact that Pippin's wife is named Diamond doesn't mean that she's cold and hard, does it? Surely not - at least, I hope not!

[Sharkû]

_Smaug_ in The Hobbit is not Icelandic. If the two forms are identical, it's a likely coincidence. Primitive Germanic means nothing but early Germanic; a largely assumed/derived language between the Indogermanic and later documented languages of Old High German, Gothic, etc. It's assumed because there are no surviving written or oral documents of it. Arguing (historic) linguistics with Tolkien is very, very thin ice.

[Finwe]

Kalimac, for Pippin's sake, I certainly hope not.

That brings me to another question. Isn't "Diamond" a bit of an anomaly? I mean, a diamond is essentially a rock, and as far as I know, Hobbits don't usually name girls after rocks, just mainly flowers. How did Diamond's unusual name come about?

[Lalaith]

If the two forms are identical, it's a likely coincidence

It's more of a likelihood than a coincidence, as Icelandic is the least changed of the Germanic languages and so probably most similar to proto-Germanic.
In Icelandic the verb is smjuga, the past participle is smaug.
I bow to your knowledge of Tolkien's letters Squatter, and I am ready to concur that Tolkien had the protoGermanic rather than Icelandic in mind.
As it's acknowledged that most of the dwarf names in the Hobbit are taken from the Icelandic Edda poems, I'll desist from trying to claim Smaug for Icelandic as well...

[Kalimac]

Finwe - more unusual, I think, but certainly not an anomaly. There's indication in the family trees that jewel-names were used for girls, just not quite as often. For example, Pippin has a sister named Pearl and an aunt named Esmeralda, and one of Sam's daughters is named Ruby. Basically, hobbits went for very pretty names - and besides, jewels and flowers are similar in some non-financial ways; both very bright colored and used for decoration. Like the fairy-tale of the girl who whenever she spoke, a jewel or a blossom would fall out of her mouth. Obviously they're not of equal value, but they're both attractive in their own way.