Many Names

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.

 

Many Meetings

Well, there are many of them, aren’t there?  First the missing Gandalf turns up abruptly by Frodo’s sick bed; then we meet Elrond and Arwen; then Gloin; then Bilbo; then Strider under a new name.  It is a chapter of discovering old friends and discovering new things about old friends.  It is a chapter that gives one the impression that something is afoot, and that the impending council is going to be an explosion of discoveries and strange tales.

All this takes place against the backdrop of my favourite place in all literature:  the Last Homely House east of the Sea.  I noticed during this re-reading how little Tolkien actually tells us about the appearance of this house.  Sometimes it seems more like a country manor with a garden, and sometimes more like a Gothic abbey or even an intricate medieval city.  Perhaps this ambiguity is intentional.  Tolkien indulges in very little description of Rivendell, but what he tells us is significant.  Rivendell retains the memory of good things from all the places of Middle Earth, and it reminds each person of what he loves best.  It is “a perfect house, whether you like food or sleep or story-telling or singing, or just sitting and thinking.”  It has nooks and crannies and Elves of every stripe.  As Pseudo-Dionysius might have put it, Rivendell is variety in unity and unity in variety.

Along with the peaceful harmony of variety, Rivendell is a place of the peaceful harmony of different orders of beings.  By this I mean Elves (themselves possessing varying degrees of greatness), Men, Hobbits, and even Dwarves.  (Surprisingly, except for occasional references, the old feud between Dwarves and Elves seems to be dropped in the Last Homely House).  There is what might be called a “cordial consent of being to being”* throughout the house of Elrond.  For it is a House and not a Court; and Elrond is a host, and not a king.  The great of the world pass through such a place and rub shoulders with the comparatively insignificant, all with the greatest amiability and enjoyment.  The Elves themselves are sometimes “like kings, terrible and splendid,” while others are “merry as children”—and they coexist with perfect amicability.

There are few incidents in the Lord of the Rings that I love as much as Bilbo, the old Hobbit, requisitioning the appearance of Aragorn, the Heir of Isildur and rightful King of most of Middle Earth, to help him work out a rhyme in a little ditty he is composing for the amusement of the Elves.  And Aragorn comes, not because Bilbo is his equal, but because the two are friends, and greatness and smallness do not matter in a such place.  In much the same way, when Frodo is seated (to his dismay!) at the table of the great during Elrond’s feast, his feelings of smallness vanish as he enters into conversation and enjoyment with his neighbors.

What I am trying to gesture at with these ramblings is something I find foreign to our world and way of thinking.  For there is a hierarchy among the intelligent beings in Middle Earth—not merely a hierarchy of position and personal qualities, such as we find in our own world, but a radical hierarchy of essences and species and internal powers.  Our own modern-day quibbles over the equality of the sexes and the races vanishes like a star in the sun in the world of Middle Earth.  For in Middle Earth, the inequalities between Hobbits and Men and Elves are greater, involving the exercise of immaterial powers over persons of lesser degree—involving even the ability to inhabit a suprasensible world in addition to the sensible one.  Yet in houses like Rivendell, this radical hierarchy does not create envy or oppression among the ranks of beings, but rather concord and mutual respect.  There is dominion without domineering, giving-of-place without fawning, and above all, merriment and good humour in putting up with both one’s betters and inferiors.

After all, at the end of the day, the setting of Rivendell gives us the chance to enjoy what some never enjoy in our own world.  In how many places could such a diversity of ranks and privileges co-exist without perversion and abuse?  Rivendell satisfies our desire that Hobbits should be Hobbits and not Elves; that Elves should be immortal and not Men; that Men too should be what they are—some Kings, some innkeepers, and some children—and that all should enjoy the best that their order offers.

 

*A phrase of Jonathan Edwards’.  Sometimes a Protestant can sound just like a Thomist.