Suddenly Bilbo looked up. “Ah, there you are at last, Dúnadan!” he cried.
“Strider!” said Frodo. “You seem to have a lot of names.”
“Well, Strider is one that I haven’t heard before, anyway,” said Bilbo. “What do you call him that for?”
Why is it that things in Middle Earth have so many names? It’s as if Tolkien’s narrative landscape was tunneled through with linguistic rabbit holes, teeming with broods of playful and proliferating names. Black Riders, Ringwraiths, and Nazgul; Rivendell, the Last Homely House, Imladris; Strider, Aragorn, the Dúnadan—it seems as if being a person or place of importance in Middle Earth requires at least three different names, one of which must be in a foreign language if at all possible.
The meetings at Rivendell, and the tales told at the Council of Elrond in the chapter following, must have worked on Tolkien like so many excuses for enriching the treasure-trove of Middle-Earthling names. The character who was Tom Bombadil several chapters ago becomes Iarwain Ben-adar, Forn, and Orald during the Council of Elrond; and the sneaking culprit who bears so much of the blame for the Ring is revealed not only as Gollum but as Sméagol, who is to become Slinker and Stinker before his tale is done.
And this is not even counting the epithets. Frodo is dubbed both the Halfling and the Ring-Bearer, just as Elrond is the Half-Elven and Gandalf is the Grey. The Ring itself is variously the One Ring and Isildur’s Bane. Even Sauron, who does not seem to have another proper name—certainly not one as decorous and awe-inspiring as “Tom Riddle”—has an entourage of epithets that include “the Dark Lord,” “the Necromancer,” and “the Enemy.”
And so it seems that any being of any importance or lineage in Middle Earth bears many names, and indeed cannot avoid bearing them. Interestingly, the lone class of beings to largely escape these multiple namings is the Hobbits. They are named in our common modern way of First Name, Last Name, and that is very likely because they are neither important enough to have epithets (except in the case of a prodigy like the Old Took), nor adventurous enough to win other names. (Think of how many multiple namings arise from the same thing being named in multiple languages. That is a phenomenon that no respectable Hobbit would wander far enough to suffer.)
This fanciful proliferation of names, I believe, is ultimately not merely fanciful. If it does nothing else, it contributes its tuppence to the three-dimensional texture of Middle Earth as a world of intelligent beings. Things are named diversely because diverse languages name them, or because diverse qualities inhere in them. A name picks out what is most salient from someone’s particular angle of vision. Thus, Isildur’s Bane means nothing to Frodo until he hears the story of Isildur; but to the Heirs of Isildur, the epithet strikes closer to home than the mere noun “the Ring.” So it is with the Last Homely House and Imladris. The first conveys to us all the comfort of a chair by a fire; the last conveys all the magic and mystery of an unexplored fairy kingdom.
All this seems to be roughly what lies in the background of Bilbo and Frodo’s exchange on the names of Aragorn. It is tempting to think that Tolkien included the brief conversation just to make his linguistic point. For Aragorn explains to Bilbo that he is called Strider by a particular folk (the Bree-landers), much as he will explain to Boromir in the following chapter that travelers give the Rangers scornful names. The striding and wandering quality—“Longshanks” as Bill Ferny puts it—is what stands out about the Rangers to such a folk. But as Bilbo goes on to demonstrate in Elvish, the name of “the Dúnadan” when applied to Aragorn is fraught with import. It means “Man of the West, Numenorean,” and is not only what stands out to the Elves when they look at the weather-beaten Ranger, but is closer to the reality of who he is.
And so I say: let the names be fruitful and multiply, and replenish all of Middle Earth.
October 28, 2009 at 10:30 am
I agree. Naming is largely a product of the many cultures in Middle Earth. The names arise from where cultures have touched; since often this was in the far past they have become names of myth largely, and often romanticized.
There is also much to be seen in naming if we take my favorite Tolkien quote into account.
“You call a tree a tree, and you think nothing more of the word. But it was not a ‘tree’ until someone gave it that name. You call a star a star, and say it is just a ball of matter moving on a mathematical course. But that is merely how you see it. By so naming things and describing them you are only inventing your own terms about them. And just as speech is invention about objects and ideas, so myth is invention about truth.”
So maybe in not restricting himself to just one particular name, Tolkien is on some level explaining the true complexity of the world. A complexity we lose, when we limit ourselves to one name, one interpretation.
October 28, 2009 at 10:59 am
I think one of the best examples of cultures “touching” is the period of time when Merry is in Rohan and Pippin is in Gondor. Hobbits get some decently foreign names then (“holbytla,” “periannath,” etc). I’ve often wondered what the Entish name for “Hobbit” turns out to be after the Entmoot decides to add them to the list of beings in the world. Presumeably the Entish word would be longer than two syllables.
Where can I find the quotation by Tolkien? It’s an excellent one for carrying around in a back pocket.
October 28, 2009 at 3:32 pm
I found it in Carpenter’s biography…page 151…it is part of Tolkien’s defense of Christianity, which ultimately was the most influential in CS Lewis’s conversion.
Here is the rest of the quote:
“We have come from God, and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, will also reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God. Indeed only by myth-making, only by becoming a ’sub-creator’ and inventing stories, can Man aspire to the state of perfection that he knew before the Fall. Our myths may be misguided, but they steer however shakily towards the true harbour, while materialistic ‘progress’ leads only to a yawning abyss and the Iron Crown of the power of evil.”
Ultimately this belief was expanded to became enshrined in Tolkien’s poem: Mythopoeia.
When reading this post, and writing my comment, I too was thinking of hobbits and the various incarnations of their name. In many ways the names of LotR function in the same manner as Tom Bombadil. They are meant to give a sense of other; events and meanings outside the hobbit’s experience. It is to show that not all is as it seems, and not all is bent to a single will or purpose.
If you haven’t read Mythopoeia, it would add great depth to this argument. Also something to be said for Tolkien’s own “name-making,” seen in the Elves of Cuivienen.