Tom Bombadil

[Tar-Jêx]

Originally Posted by mhagain

I don't see why he even needs to have a purpose within Ea, to be honest - or at least a purpose that's relevant to the main action of the stories that Tolkien was writing.

But he did serve purpose to the plot and atmosphere. Without Tom, the hobbits would be stuck in a barrow, or imprisoned by Old Man Willow. The Witch King would not have been defeated without the swords found in the barrows, which was part of Tom's section in the story.

If you are referring to the journey of the Ring to Orodruin as the main action of the stories, then Tom is a lot less important, but his impact on the story was meaningful.

Plot aside, Tom's purpose was adding to the atmosphere of the Old Forest, and to exhibit classical magic.

[Belegorn]

I can't recall right now, but I wonder if the Northern Sea-Kings were familiar with Bombadil, at least as familiar as he seemed with them. I don't think Aragorn spoke much of him, if at all, at the Council.

[Tar-Jêx]

Originally Posted by Belegorn

I can't recall right now, but I wonder if the Northern Sea-Kings were familiar with Bombadil, at least as familiar as he seemed with them. I don't think Aragorn spoke much of him, if at all, at the Council.

I don't think Aragorn spoke about him at all. The Northern Sea-kings don't seem like they would have known about him because he wasn't the sort of person to venture anywhere outside of the Old Forest.

[jallanite]

Originally Posted by Belegorn

I can't recall right now, but I wonder if the Northern Sea-Kings were familiar with Bombadil, at least as familiar as he seemed with them. I don't think Aragorn spoke much of him, if at all, at the Council.

Tolkien pretends to translate some northern names in Middle-earth, by Norse (Scandinavian) names, whence the Dwarf names and Gandalf. On page 265 Elrond says:

But many another name he [Bombadil] has since been given by other folk: Forn by the Dwarves, Orald by northern Men, and many other names beside.

Hammond and Scull, in their The Lord of the Rings: A Reader’s Companion, page 128, write:

In Nomenclature (under Orald) Tolkien states that Forn and Orald ‘are meant to be the names in foreign tongues (not Common Speech)…. Forn is actually the Scandinavian word for “(belonging to) ancient (days)”…. Orald is an Old English word for “very ancient”, evidently meant [in The Lord of the Rings] to represent the names of the Rohirrim and their kin.’

This makes it clear that Bombadil was at one time more widely known, spoken of in many tongues. But nowhere is any mention made of this figure in connection with “the Northern Sea-kings”, which itself proves nothing.

[Zigûr]

Originally Posted by jallanite

Forn is actually the Scandinavian word for “(belonging to) ancient (days)”…. Orald is an Old English word for “very ancient”, evidently meant [in The Lord of the Rings] to represent the names of the Rohirrim and their kin.’

That's interesting. I'd always assumed that 'Forn' was a Khuzdul word for some reason. Of course it obviously isn't, given that it lacks a triconsonantal word structure - I think that soft 'r' wouldn't count as one if it was Khuzdul. Similarly, of course, the name 'Durin' was given to the Dwarven ancestor retroactively in the tongue of Northern Men long after Durin the Deathless' own time so I really shouldn't be surprised at the Dwarves using Mannish names of their own choosing for people who pre-dated their use of Mannish. I am of course assuming the Dwarves knew of Bombadil before they adopted Northern Mannish as their public naming language, however.

[jallanite]

Originally Posted by Zigûr

I am of course assuming the Dwarves knew of Bombadil before they adopted Northern Mannish as their public naming language, however.

Possibly the Dwarves knew of Bombadil before adopting Northern Mannish and possibly they didn’t. The name Forn is presumably a current name for Bombadil originating among Dwarves who took names of translated Norse.

Similarly, of course, the name 'Durin' was given to the Dwarven ancestor retroactively in the tongue of Northern Men long after Durin the Deathless' own time …

In The Peoples of Middle-earth (HoME 12), page 304, J. R. R. Tolkien attributes the name Durin to the Men of the North of the Second Age, and states the name was a word for ‘king’ in that language. But Durin in Old Norse is not related to a word for ‘king’ so far as I know. It may be from dyrr ‘door’ and be intended to mean ‘Door Warden’ or from the stem dúrr- ‘slumber, sleep’ and mean ‘Sleeper, Sleepy’.

In a note on this statement Christopher Tolkien notes that his father here seems to accept Durin as the ‘real’ Mannish name of the Father of the Longbeards, but that name is a name derived from Old Norse, so it must be a translation. But I’m not sure that J. R. R. Tolkien did not, in this case, understand it as a genuine name meaning ‘king’ that by coincidence was the same as the genuine Old Norse Dwarf name Durin.