380 – So Mind-Bogglingly Useful

Summary

The Prancing Pony Podcast
Episode 380 – So Mind-Bogglingly Useful
Release Date: July 20, 2025

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Introduction

In episode 380 of The Prancing Pony Podcast, hosts Alan Sisto and Shawn E. Marchese delve deep into the intricate world of J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium, focusing particularly on Appendix F of The Lord of the Rings. This episode, titled "So Mind-Bogglingly Useful," offers listeners a comprehensive exploration of Tolkien's linguistic choices and translation methodologies, enriched by a guest interview and insightful discussions.

Guest Interview: Louis Kiner

[03:50 – 07:15]

Joining Alan and Shawn is Louis Kiner, affectionately known as Tsunami Louis, a college professor from South Carolina specializing in the intersection of physics and oceanography. Louis shares his journey into Tolkien fandom, starting with a foundation in C.S. Lewis's Narnia Chronicles before encountering The Fellowship of the Ring in middle school. His passion for Tolkien extends into academia, where he has even taught seminars on Tolkien and Science.

Notable Quotes:

• "It's a story well told." — Louis Kiner ([09:43])
• "It's a source of inspiration, it's an opportunity for academic study. You know, most of all, it's entertaining." — Louis Kiner ([09:27])

During a lightning round, Louis reveals his evolving favorite characters—from Frodo and Aragorn to Gandalf and Theoden—and highlights memorable scenes like the Charge of the Rohirrim and the Dawning of the Sun over Helm's Deep.

Deep Dive: Tolkien's Translation Choices

[15:06 – 98:04]

After the guest segment, Alan and Shawn pivot to a detailed analysis of Tolkien's Appendix F—a treasure trove of insights into the languages of Middle-earth. They discuss how Tolkien, a philologist by passion, approached the translation of various tongues, particularly the Common Speech (Westron), Rohirric, and the languages of Elves and Dwarves.

Key Topics:

1. Translation by Sense:

   • Tolkien emphasizes translating names and terms based on their meanings rather than direct phonetic equivalents. For instance, Imladris becomes Rivendell, translating the Elvish deep dale into a familiar English term.
   • Notable Quote: "He's saying he's not quite able to convey the differences as much as they existed, but we still get a real sense of it." — Alan Sisto ([22:17])

2. Dialect Representation:

   • The Shire's rustic dialect is depicted through variations in English, such as using "agin" for against or "do not" vs. "don't" to reflect formality.
   • James highlights: "Hobbits indeed spoke a rustic dialect, whereas in Gondor and Rohan a more antique language was used, more formal and terse." ([03:31])

3. Challenges in Other Languages:

   • The hosts speculate on how Tolkien's translation strategies would apply to non-Germanic languages. They conclude that while translating into languages like Dutch might retain the Old English feel naturally, languages with entirely different structures (e.g., Mandarin) pose significant challenges.
   • Alan muses: "It's a ton of work. Is it any wonder that authors don't address this particular aspect of world-building?" ([82:20])

4. Construction of Elvish Languages:

   • Tolkien's creation of Quenya and Sindarin draws inspiration from Finnish and Welsh, respectively, aiming for linguistic characters that are both structurally sound and aesthetically pleasing.
   • Notable Quote: "Quenya is rated amongst the most attractive of languages by people that know nothing about Tolkien." — James Tauber ([43:14])

5. Pluralization and Linguistic Evolution:

   • The episode explores how Tolkien handled plurals, drawing parallels with English exceptions and Sindarin mutations. For example, dwarves vs. dwarfs, and how languages evolve over time within the narrative.
   • Alan explains: "The plural of 'dwarf' is 'dwarves,' but Tolkien prefers 'dwarrows' for authenticity." ([68:35])

6. Hobbit Names and Wordplay:

   • A significant portion is dedicated to the translation and Anglicization of Hobbit names, such as Bilbo, Frodo, and Samwise Gamgee, showcasing Tolkien's meticulous approach to preserving meaning, humor, and cultural nuances.
   • Notable Quote: "Translating puns and wordplay is one of the most difficult things to do for a translator." — James Tauber ([116:00])

Listener Engagement and Community

Throughout the episode, Alan and Shawn encourage listeners to engage with the podcast community via social media platforms and Patreon, highlighting the collaborative spirit of Tolkien enthusiasts.

Conclusion

Episode 380 of The Prancing Pony Podcast is a must-listen for Tolkien aficionados and linguistics enthusiasts alike. Through expert analysis and engaging discussions, Alan, Shawn, and their guest Louis Kiner unravel the complexities of Tolkien's linguistic artistry, offering listeners a deeper appreciation of the philological underpinnings that enrich Middle-earth.

Join the Fellowship:
For more in-depth discussions and to support the podcast, visit patreon.com/prancingponypod. Engage with the community on Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, and other social platforms to continue exploring the vast realms of Tolkien's creation.

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Note: This summary excludes advertisements, intros, outros, and non-content sections to focus solely on the episode's substantive discussions.

Transcript

[Alan Sisto]

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[James Tauber]

Alan indeed speaks, for the most part, a rustic dialect, after all.

[Alan Sisto]

Dude, what are you talking about, man?

[James Tauber]

Folks, pull up a bench in the common room and join us. I'm James Tauber, the Sage of the south, and I'm here with a man of the west who wouldn't know the deferential form of the second person pronoun and wouldn't use it even if he did. Alan Sisto.

[Alan Sisto]

The strangeness of Alan's speech is well known, folks. Join us as we look deep into Tolkien's explanations for how and why he translated things the way he did in the second half of Appendix F on translation.

[James Tauber]

Indeed, folks, no matter how you arrived, you're all welcome here in the common room at the Prancing Pony podcast. We're reading and talking our way through Middle Earth with plenty of speculation and bad jokes along the way, that's for sure.

[Alan Sisto]

We do love our deep dives into the lore, though, discussing our favorite themes and connections and a whole lot more.

[James Tauber]

But we try to keep it light and fun, like a couple of friends chatting at the pub. And we're glad you've joined us, and.

[Alan Sisto]

I'm sure you'll be glad you joined as well. But before we get to tonight's chapter discussion, well, you know, we've told you before, there's a long line at the North Wing, so we've got an extra special treat for the for the second week in a row, it's time to Step into the North Wing and visit with one of our listeners. Today we're bringing you another new installment of the North Wing.

[James Tauber]

Barleyman Butterbur had a room or two in the North Wing at the Prancing Pony Inn, made special for hobbits. And this is our place made special for some of our listeners to give us a chance to get to know them.

[Alan Sisto]

Now, rooms at the North Wing are a little hard to come by, so only our patrons at the Elronds Honorarium and Kierdan's contribution tiers are elig. If you'd like to be one of the next patrons to join us, be sure to check out patreon.com prancingponypod Please do.

[James Tauber]

We've got a waiting list for the North Wing right now, but we'll get to them all soon and we'll make room for more if necessary.

[Alan Sisto]

Well, then, James, why don't we go ahead and welcome tonight's guest to the North Wing, Louis Kiner, though I know him better as Tsunami Louis.

[Louis Kiner]

Hey, how are you doing today?

[Alan Sisto]

We're doing all right. So tell us a little bit about yourself. Where are you from? What do you do, and then what do your loved ones think of all this Tolkien stuff? You're into that sort of thing?

[Louis Kiner]

Sure. Well, I'm originally from Virginia, from Fredericksburg, Virginia. But right now I'm a college professor at a public university in South Carolina.

[Alan Sisto]

Oh, right on.

[Louis Kiner]

And my area of interest is at the intersection of physics and oceanography, hence the tsunami. And what I do is I use imaging data provided by satellites to study the coastal oceans.

[Alan Sisto]

Oh, wow.

[Louis Kiner]

And so that's what I've been doing research on and teaching over the past however many years. But recently, though, I've been the director of an interdisciplinary program at my university. So it's mostly administrative work. And so that's a bad part. But the good part is that I get to teach seminars on pretty much anything I want.

[Alan Sisto]

Oh, fun.

[Louis Kiner]

And I've even been able to teach a seminar recently on Tolkien and science. So that was really fun.

[James Tauber]

Ooh, that would be.

[Louis Kiner]

So that's me. And I have a great family. I have a wife and daughter. My wife teases me about my Tolkien obsession, but she's. She is very supportive.

[Alan Sisto]

Good, good.

[Louis Kiner]

And my daughter is a big fan of Tolkien.

[Alan Sisto]

Right on.

[Louis Kiner]

Recently bringing over all of her friends for, like, a marathon of both Lord of the Rings movies and the Hobbit movies. I tried to dissuade them from the second one, but I was wondering if.

[Alan Sisto]

You were going to go there?

[Louis Kiner]

No. Well, but I don't think she had her really a choice. She actually saw the Fellowship of the Ring when she was less than a year old. We took her to the midnight showing back in December of 2001, I believe, and she was, she basically, obviously slept through the whole thing, but she was there for the premiere of Fellowship of the Ring.

[Alan Sisto]

Oh, that's great. I love that.

[James Tauber]

Wonderful. Okay, the question we ask everyone who comes to the Prancing Pony, when and how did you first discover Tolkien's works? What was the experience like? And why do you keep coming back?

[Louis Kiner]

So I think I, like a lot of people, came to Tolkien through C.S. lewis. I was in middle school and the Narnia Chronicles were in my church library. And so I read them. I really enjoyed them. But of course, at the end, then I asked, okay, well, what's next?

[Alan Sisto]

Yes.

[Louis Kiner]

I don't know if it was a friend or a librarian or someone who. But I was given the Fellowship of the Ring to read. And if you remember, it was the, it was like the 1970s white copies with the Tolkien's illustrations on the front. And I remember where it was in my middle school library. So, so that's, that was the beginning. Of course, I, I got my own. I got. I know you remember these, the, the red, green and blue Darrell Case illustrated ones. So, so those are the ones that were just dog eared and I think I still have them, but they're in pieces.

[Alan Sisto]

That was my first set as well. They actually fully disintegrated. I had to buy a replacement set for sentimental value.

[Louis Kiner]

So I remember reading the Silmarillion in middle school. I remember that because I had a shop teacher who, who was also into it. And, and so we were discussing Tolkien in shop glass.

[Alan Sisto]

Oh, that's fantastic.

[Louis Kiner]

And in high school, I actually had a teacher, a English teacher who did a semester class on Tolkien.

[Alan Sisto]

Wow.

[Louis Kiner]

And that was the cool part. The, the odd part was that was the first time I actually saw the Ralph Bashke animated version. We watched that in class. So that, that was interesting.

[Alan Sisto]

Interesting is a good word to apply to that film.

[Louis Kiner]

Yeah. But beyond that, I guess just after that, I remember, I remember I was in a bookstore when I saw this thing called Unfinished Tales on the shelf.

[Alan Sisto]

Oh, yes.

[Louis Kiner]

And I was, I just remember my accurate reaction. Oh, there's more. Oh my God, there's more. And, and so that, that, that really set off for me a lifetime of collecting and studying Tolkien's works.

[James Tauber]

Oh, that's great.

[Louis Kiner]

I keep coming back to it. Even now, because at different times in my life, it's been able to provide me sort of a. It's been provided me solace at times. It's been a source of inspiration, it's been an opportunity for academic study. You know, most of all, it's entertaining.

[Alan Sisto]

It's.

[Louis Kiner]

It's a story well told.

[Alan Sisto]

Oh, you're not kidding. And that was at least one of Tolkien's own goals, right? Was just to try my hand at telling a really long story. And like you said, he did it well. So which is your favorite book in the legendarium, and why? And if you have a favorite non legendarium work of his, what is it?

[Louis Kiner]

So I guess my favorite book, and we'll go with books, I guess is Book three.

[Alan Sisto]

Yes.

[Louis Kiner]

You know, first part of Two Towers. It just, it just. I just love the imagery of the, of Rohan and, you know, the Fanghorn and just. And just that, that just really transports me there. That entire, that entire book there. And so if I have a favorite one, it's that one. But obviously they're all great.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, that's fair. Any non legendarium works?

[Louis Kiner]

Non legendarium. I guess I'm going to have to go with Smith of Wootton Major.

[Alan Sisto]

Hmm, good choice.

[Louis Kiner]

Yeah. It's a delightful story, really deep though.

[Alan Sisto]

It is. It's really a wonderful example of fairy and the perils of such. Yes.

[James Tauber]

Right. Any talking goals that you'd like to share? Tracking down a special book for your collection? Going to a Moot. Anything like that?

[Louis Kiner]

I think as far as collecting goes, I'm collected out as far as like all of the. I've got, well, several copies of all the standard things. And pretty much at this point I'd have to start opening up the wild a little bit more than I'd want to. So I think I'm good on collecting. However, I really want to get to Oxenmut sometime. That's a goal of mine.

[Alan Sisto]

That's a great event.

[Louis Kiner]

If I had to head to one, that's it.

[Alan Sisto]

That's a worthy goal. Oxamut for sure. And now it's time for a lightning round. Quick questions and answers. Who's your favorite character in the Lord of the Rings?

[Louis Kiner]

Well, it has to be Gandalf. I mean, I have identified with Gandalf since the first time I read it. Other characters I used to identify with Frodo when I was small. Then I identified with. With Aragorn or I guess, let me put it this way, I aspired to be Aragorn.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah.

[Louis Kiner]

And as I'm getting older, and older. I, I, I feel a lot more like Theoden. I, I feel a lot more like Theoden. Pre. Pre Healing.

[Alan Sisto]

Breathe the free air, my friend.

[Louis Kiner]

Thank you. But, but, yeah, overall, definitely Gandalf. That, that, that is my.

[James Tauber]

All right, what about a favorite scene or moment in the Legendarium?

[Louis Kiner]

You know, I think I'm always going back to the battles, and that may not be all that unique, but just the inspiration of the charge of the Rohirrim and the dawning of the sun over Helm's Deep and just the hope coming when there was despair, that's something I keep going back to. And so, so really, it's probably a lot of people's favorites, but, yeah, those are my favorites.

[Alan Sisto]

All right, what about your favorite Hobbit?

[Louis Kiner]

Favorite Hobbit. Definitely Frodo.

[Alan Sisto]

All right.

[Louis Kiner]

I've always identified with Frodo. Oh, and I do have to say book Frodo.

[Alan Sisto]

Yes. That's fair. That's fair.

[James Tauber]

Okay. Rivendell or Lorien?

[Louis Kiner]

Oh, definitely Rivendell. I mean, that's. Again, I think I'll have a lot of company there if we ever get to go.

[Alan Sisto]

I think so.

[Louis Kiner]

But both the descriptions in the novels and also, I think Peter Jackson did a wonderful job at just visualizing sort of what I visualize Rivendell as, with the mountains, with the water, and just. I would just love to just spend so much time in the library and in the Great hall and. Yeah, I could just. I could just live there like Bilbo, for years and years.

[Alan Sisto]

Favorite poem or song in the Legendarium.

[Louis Kiner]

Okay, so I'm gonna. I'm gonna be a bit weird here and say the mu. Lips.

[James Tauber]

Oh.

[Louis Kiner]

So, yeah, just, just, just, just simply. Because when I read that, I'm like, this is weird. And this is kind of cool. This is creepy.

[Alan Sisto]

Creepy. Yeah.

[Louis Kiner]

But, but once again, it's done well. It's creepy. Done well.

[Alan Sisto]

And, folks, for those of you who don't know where that is, it's not in the Lord of the Rings. It's in the Adventures of Tom Bombadil. So you could make the argument that it's not quite legendarium, but it is legendarium, because, of course, it's Tom, and there's all sorts of things in there that connect to it.

[Louis Kiner]

It's the Extended Universe Legendarium.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, exactly. That's what we'll call it.

[James Tauber]

All right, Exactly. Okay, last question. Favorite author or book?

[Louis Kiner]

Other than Tolkien, definitely going with Terry Pratchett here.

[Alan Sisto]

Okay.

[Louis Kiner]

I adore his works. I adore his ability to combine parody of fantasy. But also satire like in commentary on social events and I just his the growth his growth throughout all of his writings. His last few books are just so powerful and they are some of my favorites that if I'm not reading Tolkien, I'm reading Terry Pratchett.

[Alan Sisto]

All right, fair enough. Great answers. Thank you, Louis. We have really enjoyed having you here in the North Wing. It is time for all of us though, to head back to the Common Room to join the rest of the listeners.

[James Tauber]

Thanks again and we'll see you back at our next questions after nightfall, if not sooner.

[Louis Kiner]

Thank you all.

[Alan Sisto]

Thank you. And now we return you to the podcast in progress.

[James Tauber]

Okay, let's get lost on translation, I guess.

[Alan Sisto]

Indeed.

[James Tauber]

Take it away, Alan.

[Alan Sisto]

Easy to get lost in on or around translation on translation in presenting the matter of the Red Book as a history for people of today to read, the whole of the linguistic setting has been translated as far as possible into terms of our own times. Only the languages alien to the common speech have been left in their original form, but these appear mainly in the names of persons and places. The common speech, as the language of the Hobbits and their narratives has inevitably been turned into modern English. In the process, the difference between the varieties observable in the use of the Western has been lessened. Some attempt has been made to represent varieties by variations in the kind of English used, but the divergence between the pronunciation and idiom of the Shire and the Westron tongue in the mouths of the Elves or of the Hymen of Gondor, was greater than has been shown in this book. Hobbits indeed spoke for the most part a rustic dialect, whereas in Gondor and Rohan a more antique language was used more formal and more terse. One point in the divergence may here be noted, since, though important, it has proved impossible to represent the Westron tongue made in the pronouns of the second person, and often also in those of the third, a distinction independent of number between familiar and deferential forms. It was, however, one of the peculiarities of Shire usage that the deferential forms had gone out of colloquial use. They lingered only among the villagers, especially of the Westfarthing, who used them as endearments. This was one of the things referred to when people of Gondor spoke of the strangeness of Hobbit speech. Peregrine took, for instance, in his first few days in Minas Tirith used the familiar for people of all ranks, including the Lord Denethor himself. This may have amused the aged steward, but it must have astonished his servants. No doubt this free use of the familiar forms helped to spread the popular rumor that Peregrine was a person of very high rank in his own country. It will be noticed that hobbits such as Frodo and other persons such as Gandalf and Aragorn do not always use the same style. This is intentional. The more learned and able among the hobbits had some knowledge of book language, as it was termed in the Shire, and they were quick to note and adopt the style of those whom they met. It was in any case natural for much traveled folk to speak more or less after the manner of those among whom they found themselves. Especially in the case of men who, like Aragorn, were often at pains to conceal their origin and their business.

[James Tauber]

Wonderful stuff. So we're getting near the end of the appendices and now it's time to sort of look behind the curtain and get first hand explanation from Tolkien as to how he's represented various languages. And just as importantly, why?

[Alan Sisto]

I love this because it's a chance to really hear from Tolkien himself. I mean, this is. He's writing to us as him now, right?

[James Tauber]

It's not the narrator anymore, it's Tolkien for the modern reader.

[Alan Sisto]

Exactly. He's no longer the chronicler or the historian, he's no longer even the translator. He's just him telling us why he's made these decisions.

[James Tauber]

Exactly. And yet he still uses terms like history to describe what he's done.

[Alan Sisto]

And I love that. I was going to actually point that out immediately. I love that conceit that that the Red Book is, quote, a history for people of today to read. And you know, we've seen this before. If nothing else, Tolkien's very consistent on this point. And since it's a history for us to read, Tolkien has, well, very kindly translated the whole of the linguistic setting, but not everything.

[James Tauber]

Right. Languages that he says are alien to common speech or Westron were left as they are with some interesting nuances there that we'll give you.

[Alan Sisto]

I was going to say there are some slight tweaks here and there, but.

[James Tauber]

The common speech has, as it would need to be for us to read it, translated into modern English.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, I mean, can you imagine if you pick up the Lord of the Rings and it's just in Westeron and you've got some guide at the back that tries to help you translate it yourself? No, thank you very much. Note the point that he makes here about the common speech, that the reason why it's been translated this way is because that's the language of the Hobbits and their stories again with the consistency of this being a Hobbit centric story.

[James Tauber]

Exactly. And we're going to see that time and time again that things are always done from the point of view of the Hobbits, including the language side of things.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah. Oh, absolutely.

[James Tauber]

Yeah. So Tolkien's careful to explain that because of how the common speech is translated into English, he's been unable to accurately represent some of the differences between the different peoples that speak Westerond. He gives an example. The difference between the way that common speech is pronounced in the Shire and the idioms that are used versus the way the elves or Gondorian high men speak it. It's even bigger in reality than it is in the book.

[Alan Sisto]

That's something, because it feels like it's already pretty big. I mean, if you think about, like, Farmer Cotton or Ted Sandyman.

[James Tauber]

Yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

Or Bill Fernie and how. Just how different they are from, like, Glorfindel in the way they speak.

[James Tauber]

Exactly. And this is something that I'm continuing to do research on ultimately as part of my. My PhD, but in my master's dissertation, and I gave a talk at Oxenmood on this as well, I looked at the way that different characters speak. And one of the things that I looked at, just as a simple example, for those of you who aren't aware of this work, just looking at contractions and in particular the way that do not is contracted to don't. And this actually plays in really nicely to the remark that Tolkien makes about people like. And he lists Frodo, Gandalf and Aragorn as examples of characters whose languages change depending on who they were talking to. And you see that even just in this simple mechanism of do you say do not or do you say don't? Because for the most part, if you look at any Gondorian, any elf, they will never contract do not to don't. They always say do not. Whereas all of the Hobbits, with just a handful of exceptions, will always contract to don't. And the exceptions are Frodo, Mary and.

[Alan Sisto]

Pippin, who are, of course more educated, more of that book learning.

[James Tauber]

Exactly. Exactly. And Gandalf and Aragon also can freely switch between whether they contract or not.

[Alan Sisto]

But when they switch is based on who they're talking to, Right?

[James Tauber]

Exactly, exactly. And there's a bunch of other things. I want to read some examples of the way that Tolkien tries to bring across these differences in particularly some of the idioms that he used. One of My favourite things is whenever you get the more rustic Hobbits, shall we say, he really brings in certain dialect or forms in English. He's saying he's not quite able to convey the differences as much as they existed, but we still get a real sense of it. So, for example, Daddy Two Foot in the first chapter very, very early on says, and no wonder they're queer if they live on the wrong side of Brandywine River. And right again, the Old Forest, again being a dialect form for. Against.

[Alan Sisto]

Against.

[James Tauber]

He says, right. Agin the Old Forest. That's a dark bad place if half the tales be true. Doesn't say if half the tales are true. He says if half the tales be true.

[Alan Sisto]

Very piratey.

[James Tauber]

There are. We get the strangest. The way Tolkien writes jewels. J O. Oh, yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

J O, O L S. I love that.

[James Tauber]

Just to try to convey this. And you get, you know, the gaffer saying Mr. Bilbo has learned him his letters.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah. Not meaning him any harm.

[James Tauber]

Exactly. Meaning no harm, Mac.

[Alan Sisto]

You.

[James Tauber]

Yeah. Or old Noak saying, it was Drogo's weight as sunk the boat. I think it's a real. As sunk the boat. I think it's a really interesting one. And then one of my favorites, these are all in the first chapter, but one of my favorites towards the end in the Scouring of the Shire, is all the stuff that Farmer Cotton says.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah.

[James Tauber]

And I'll just read some examples of this that, you know, they moves about and comes and goes. The bosses, they names him. So the way that he's. He's inflecting those verbs. He don't go outside the grounds now. Right. That double negative. The men don't let no one go near. So it's fascinating the way he does that. And of course, you get some of these archaisms, like when Sam says, I love him. Whether or no.

[Alan Sisto]

Yes.

[James Tauber]

That expression. Whether or no meaning, you know, no matter what, regardless.

[Alan Sisto]

Right.

[James Tauber]

It's really interesting. And then on the other side, you get the sort of. The way that the high speech is conveyed. One of the things that gets talked about a lot is the inversion of. Particularly when you negate something like when. If you and I say. You know, we say we don't. We don't care.

[Alan Sisto]

Right.

[James Tauber]

Whereas Aragon says I care not.

[Alan Sisto]

In his very formal.

[James Tauber]

Exactly. I care not now whether you say Aranian. So it's just fascinating that Tolkien does. Does this brings in these different dialects of English. Although, as he said, the actual difference between the way that the common speech was spoken among these people was even greater than he's able to convey.

[Alan Sisto]

I'm trying to imagine that. But he does talk a little bit more about that, I should say, in the draft. We've looked at draft F2 a few times last week and here he says the same thing there, but even more so in terms of that distinction. He says the differences between the use of this speech in different places and by persons of higher and lower degree for example, by Frodo and by Sam in the Shire and in Gondor or among the Elves, I have tried to represent by variations in English of approximately the same kind. In the result, these differences have, I fear, been somewhat obscured. The divergence of the vocabulary, idiom and pronunciation in the free and easy talk of the Shire from the daily language of Gondor was really greater than is here represented or could be represented without using a phonetic spelling for the Shire and an archaic diction for Gondor that would have puzzled or infuriated modern readers, which.

[James Tauber]

Which I find funny because I.

[Alan Sisto]

He already does.

[James Tauber]

That's already pretty obvious.

[Alan Sisto]

I think it's already, like you pointed out and so many others.

[James Tauber]

Well, yeah, but on the Gondor side, I think it already is pretty clear that people are speaking in a higher register and so on. One only wonders the extent to which he would have liked to have taken it. But yes, on the phonetic spelling sort of thing we get a little bit like in the trolls in the Hobbit.

[Alan Sisto]

Oh, the trolls in the Hobbit are great. Yeah.

[James Tauber]

Trying to bring across. But it is quite difficult to. To convey pronunciation differences in writing.

[Alan Sisto]

That is true. Yeah.

[James Tauber]

And it can make it very difficult to read. I don't know if you've ever read the novel Cloud Atlas but Cloud Atlas has a chapter that's written entirely in a fictitious dialect. Many years in the future of sort of where English may have gone. And it's very, very difficult to read.

[Alan Sisto]

I get a little bit of that, actually, in the. Do you ever read the Expanse where they read the Belter?

[James Tauber]

The Belter? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

When you read it in writing, it is very.

[James Tauber]

It's much more difficult.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, much more difficult. I mean, it was nice to sort of see it represented on the screen when they adapted it to television.

[James Tauber]

That was my experience of it, and that was very well done. But a great example of trying to convey that true dialect difference not just really hard subtleties of whether you contract or don't contract.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah.

[James Tauber]

You know, slang and different accent and all that kind of stuff.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, yeah. That was really interesting.

[James Tauber]

Yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

And it's It's. It makes you wonder, what would it look like? Tolkien actually been able to represent that. But it would have been even harder to read the Men of Gondor or the High Elves. Yeah, and exactly. Harder to then understand necessarily the pronunciation of folks from Shire.

[James Tauber]

Yeah, yeah. Then we get into the difference regarding the familiar or versus formal second person pronouns. Now, I know you and Don talked about this difference at length a couple of seasons back when Eowyn kept referring to Aragorn with thee and thou, while Aragorn kept her at arm's length with you.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah. That's a red flag right there. If your date keeps calling you you and you keep calling her the. Just go home. Call it a day.

[James Tauber]

Here, Tolkien uses the opportunity to explore the fact that in the Shire, the deferential forms were no longer used at all.

[Alan Sisto]

Of course they weren't. It's the Shire with the exception, by the way, he says, of the villagers in the West Farthing. That will come into play in a little bit. They only use them as terms of endearment. That is, of course, the West Farthing where Hobbiton and Bywater are. So we will cover that again in a little bit.

[James Tauber]

Yeah. So when Pippin immediately uses the familiar for everyone, including the Stuart Denethor, it took folks by surprise and it said to have possibly amused Denethor.

[Alan Sisto]

I don't know if amused is the word I would have used. Denethor doesn't strike me as the type to be amused. Just less peeved than usual. But, yeah, he's. He's. I just see it now. Hey, what's going on, man? How you doing, buddy? 10 of Thor. Like. Well, that's charming in a way. All right. In fact, according to the text, this led at least in part to the spreading of that rumor, Right. That Pippin was a prince of the Hobbits, which.

[James Tauber]

I love it, Love it. This idea that, you know, you could only get away with doing that if you were somebody important, if you were.

[Alan Sisto]

Nobility, if you were. You know. Of course, the irony is that Pippin is a prince of the Hobbits. Essentially. Essentially, he is Hobbit royalty. Yeah.

[James Tauber]

It's funny. There's a. There's a story I read recently about Mark Cuban showing up for a meeting in a T shirt.

[Alan Sisto]

Yes. Yeah.

[James Tauber]

And basically the story being that that's how, you know, the most dangerous guy.

[Alan Sisto]

Is the guy in the T shirt.

[James Tauber]

Yeah, exactly. And it's the same sort of thing, right? The most. Who is this guy that's getting away with the familiar? Second person pronounced. So before we come back to that Westfathing bit, there's a footnote to this that we should cover. Tolkien writes that in one or two places an attempt has been made to hint at these distinctions by an inconsistent use of thou. Since this pronoun is now unusual and archaic, it is employed mainly to represent the use of ceremonious language. But a change from you to thou and thee is sometimes meant to show there being no other means of doing this. A significant change from the differential or between men and women normal forms to the familiar.

[Alan Sisto]

That's really important because that whole little bit that. Look, there's no other way for me to show a transition from deferential, which would be the normal mode of communication between men and women. And that's important. Right. The normal mode of communication between Eowyn and Aragorn in that scene in the passing of the Great Company would have been the deferential, which is just the you. The arm's length you and the the. And thou is the intimate. So it definitely seems like it's a reference to the Eowyn Aragorn conversation.

[James Tauber]

Right.

[Alan Sisto]

What's interesting is that in F2, Tolkien explicitly connects it to a conversation involving Eowyn, but not the one that she has with Aragorn. He writes there, on the other hand, the sudden use of thou, thee in the dialogue of Faramir and Eowyn is meant to represent there being no other means of doing this in English. A significant change from the courteous to the familiar. But by extension we can also apply that then to the AO and Aragorn conversation.

[James Tauber]

Of course, of course. But it is interesting, this idea that you can't just use the differential versus familiar all the time in the translation because that would seem odd to us because we're not used to that. You have to be careful about when you choose.

[Alan Sisto]

So interesting to do it.

[James Tauber]

But coming back to this idea then, that in the Shire villages in the West Farthing still use the differential form forms as terms of endearment. In F2, Tolkien writes the the used by Sam Gamgee to Rose at the end of the book is intentional, but corresponds there to his actual use of the old fashioned courteous form as a.

[Alan Sisto]

Sign of affection, just like a West Farthing villager. But wait a minute. When did Sam use the in speaking to Rose? So, you know, I'm like, wait a minute, let me do a quick search for the in the word. And it's not there. Sam doesn't say it. But for that we go to Something that at the time of Tolkien writing F2, Tolkien thought would have been in the book. That's the epilogue. Now, Don and I covered the epilogue back in the very first episode of this season 341. And here's the passage. The stars were shining in a clear sky. It was the first day of the clear, bright spell that came every year to the Shire at the end of March and was every year welcomed and praised as something surprising for the time of the year. All the children were in bed. Lights were glimmering still in Hobbiton, and in many houses dotted about the darkening countryside. Sam stood at the door and looked away eastward. He drew Mistress Rose to him and held her close to his side. March 25, he said, this time 17 years ago, Rose, wife, I did not think I should ever see thee again. But I kept on hoping. I just get chills. I. I love that the epilogue has at least eventually been published. I agree with Tolkien that it was best that he didn't include it in the book, but man, that hits as beautiful. And I love that he even addressed that the. As being like, this isn't a sudden change in the way he's communicating. Whether this is a term of endearment. Yeah, It's a very sweet, old fashioned, courteous form. It's so neat.

[James Tauber]

Yeah. So the text then goes on to point out something we've often talked about and that Tolkien assumes will have been noticed, that people speak in very different.

[Alan Sisto]

Styles, like we were talking about earlier.

[James Tauber]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. The learned hobbits have book language. Frodo, Merry, Pippin, Bilbo. Interestingly, John, the contraction point tends not to do so. So Bilbo, actually, he's sort of in the middle. Interesting. Middle.

[Alan Sisto]

Exactly. He's a bridge case, isn't he?

[James Tauber]

Exactly. And they have an ability to adapt to the style of the person that they're talking to.

[Alan Sisto]

It's true. And of course, that same adaptability is seen among people who travel a lot. I get that, actually, because I, you know, I interact with people from all around the world at various different places at Moots and things. But it's especially the case for people like Aragorn, who, well, just doesn't want folks like Barlamon up in his business.

[James Tauber]

Exactly.

[Alan Sisto]

He's a secretive guy and he needs to be a secretive guy. So he knows how to shift modes.

[James Tauber]

Exactly. You don't. Why do you speak so posh? It's very suspicious.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, yeah. Strider doesn't speak posh, but Elisar does.

[James Tauber]

Exactly. Yes. So we get this fascinating mention of how the free peoples have a reverence for the ancient, not just in language, but in other things. And they enjoy the ancient as well.

[Alan Sisto]

I love that. That was a neat little aside. It just kind of takes you back to sort of the. Like, one of the things that we see in the framework of the story as a whole is this sort of medieval viewpoint of things are. It's not the progressive viewpoint, it's not the modern viewpoint that things are always improving. It's the flip of that, that things.

[James Tauber]

Are always the Golden Age.

[Alan Sisto]

Yes, The Golden Age is behind us. Eildente gewerk Gimli saying, you know, there's great stonework here, but look, the old work is better than the new work and you know, that kind of thing. So there is this both respect and really genuine joy for the. The older. Moving on to the elves, Tolkien explains that since they are particularly skilled in words, I mean they're the ones who came up with speech. Right. I mean that's, that's if I'm not mistaken, what those who speak, that's what quindy means. So that's literally in the name. They have great skill in words. They're able to speak the common speech in a way that is structured presumably idiomatically and and grammatically close to their own speech in a style that Tolkien says is even more antique than that of Gondor. So again, adaptability.

[James Tauber]

Exactly. And the Dwarves are also adaptable. But we saw that in the section on the Dwarves and how they don't want anyone to know their tongue at all.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah. So they'll just adapt. Right.

[James Tauber]

This is contrasted with the evil creatures orcs and trolls. They're said to communicate without loving words, which for philologists like Tolkien is the ultimate statement of their evil character.

[Alan Sisto]

I totally thought so. I'm reading that as like a hard slam on these people because if you don't love words, what kind of person are you?

[James Tauber]

Exactly.

[Alan Sisto]

Exactly.

[James Tauber]

That is the ultimate evil.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah. And talk about, you know, Tolkien unable to show, you know, he's already talked about how I can't show the difference between hobbits of the Shire and say, the elves in Rivendell. There's just not a wide enough gap in English to show you that the common speech of the orcs and trolls was even worse than Tolkien could show it. And he draws this parallel between their degraded and filthy talk and modern talk that is similar. He says that comes from the orc minded. He even describes what that looks like.

[James Tauber]

And you.

[Alan Sisto]

It's one of those things where you just, oh, I. I wish he were alive today. I wonder who he would. Who he would be, you know, absolutely slamming here. Dreary, repetitive, hateful, contemptuous and squalid. I love those words. Squalid in particular is good in F2.

[James Tauber]

He adds that if he'd tried to use an English more near to the reality, it would have been intolerably disgusting and to many readers, hardly intelligible.

[Alan Sisto]

What would that have looked like?

[James Tauber]

I wonder if that's still true today. Because, of course, one of the things, particularly in England, there was for a long time a lot of judgment about the way that people spoke. And there's certainly been a shift, I've seen it even myself, in terms of. There once was a time where you had to speak a particular way to be an announcer on the BBC. There was very clear rules about how you had to speak on. On television, and that's obviously shifted. You get much greater variety of accents on. On television now. So I doubt it would have been quite as intolerably disgusting for us to have different. Different accents. But that's the kind of thing I imagine Tolkien's talking about that and.

[Alan Sisto]

And just vulgar, too. I mean, yeah, you know, I imagine the orcs and trolls speaking with the kind of language that Tolkien would not want to write down.

[James Tauber]

Yes.

[Alan Sisto]

You know, yes.

[James Tauber]

His rude words. Crassness.

[Alan Sisto]

Exactly. Rude words. Curses and profanity and vulgarity. I just. And for him, that's not something he wants to be writing, and he'd like to think that his readers would not want to read that. But, you know, we all know as readers also read grr. Martin, who has no problem using plenty of those.

[James Tauber]

One thing I just want to bring up, though, is Tolkien. On the other hand, despite what I sort of said about judgments made of people's accents, Tolkien also, though, had a love of dialect forms and his teacher, Joseph Wright, I have to always bring up Joseph Wright in this regard, of course, is a perfect example of this. Joseph Wright himself, brought up in very rural Yorkshire, had a thick accent and spent much of his life documenting the different dialects of the UK before they died out, because they were dying out in the early 20th century. So. So Tolkien, I don't think would have had necessarily as much of a judgment around, oh, that's a Yorkshire accent. And we, you know, we don't like Yorkshire people. I think he would have appreciated that sort of variety a lot more. We're probably talking about something different here, as you say, it's more about the crassness.

[Alan Sisto]

And I don't think we're talking about Garrick sense or any or even idioms. I think he's talking about, well, the words that he talked about earlier, degraded and filthy talk, dreary, repetitive, hateful, contemptuous, squalid. Yeah, that's the kind of the content of the speech.

[Louis Kiner]

Yep.

[Alan Sisto]

You know. Yes. And he would have not liked that. This is probably as good a point as any in the episode to bring in a few things that Tolkien wrote about in letter number 144 to Naomi Mitchison in 1954. Now, as a reminder, Ms. Mitchison had been helping Tolkien by reading the page proofs of the first two volumes of the last Lord of the Rings. In that process, of course, she had lots and lots of questions and we see a lot of really cool letters from Tolkien to her in the collection that are very insightful. His responses are great, but we're going to focus, of course on his thoughts about language and translation. James.

[James Tauber]

Yeah, so he says that Return of the King had been completed years ago as far as the story was concerned, and that he was spending what fragments of time he had to, quote, make compressed versions of such historical, ethnographical and linguistic matters as can go in the appendix. And he even offered to send her a rather rough copy of what we now know as appendix F for her review. And in doing so, he then acknowledged that translation has, quote, given me much thought.

[Alan Sisto]

He makes the very real point that other world building authors, even really good ones, don't appear to even touch on the issue of translation. All they just don't even think about it. Tolkien admits, I am a philologist and much though I should like to be more precise on other cultural aspects and features, that is not within my competence. Anyway, language is the most important for the story has to be told and the dialogue conducted in a language.

[James Tauber]

I, I just have to point out that it's, it's funny that he says that he, he would have liked to have been more precise on other cultural aspects. It's not within my competence. That didn't stop him doing all the calendar stuff.

[Alan Sisto]

No, I was going to say it didn't stop him trying moon phases. And I would dare say, Tolkien, it wasn't that it wasn't within your competence. It might not have been within your expertise. Yes, but you proved to be more than competent in many of these things.

[James Tauber]

Exactly. But as he says, right. The dialogue, the story has to be told and the dialogue conducted in a language obviously not in English though, since this wasn't the time or place for that language to exist.

[Alan Sisto]

Right.

[James Tauber]

Instead, Tolkien says that he had equated the common speech with English and translated all the names into English words with some differentiation of style, like we mentioned when discussing the text. Now, he admits that there was a problem with languages that were related to the Westrun and gives the Rohirric language as an example. Since the Rohirrim are represented as recent comers out of the north and users of an archaic Manish language relatively untouched by the influence of Eldaren, I have turned their names into forms like, but not identical with Old English. Similarly, he adds that the language of the Men of the Dale and the Long Lake would, quote, be represented as more or less Scandinavian in character, but it is only represented by a few names, especially those of the Dwarves that came from that region. And there's that. There's that retconic game.

[Alan Sisto]

There it is. I'm trying to come.

[James Tauber]

How do I explain while I use why I use.

[Alan Sisto]

Why did I use Thorgitar?

[James Tauber]

Exactly, exactly. But it's a brilliant retcon and it makes total sense. Although we'll get the mailbag question that we have actually touches on some interesting issues with this idea of what he did with the Rohirrim and the Men of the day.

[Alan Sisto]

I'll be looking forward to that. So it's the details that he provides in the Elvish languages that are what's really unique to this letter and not discussed in Appendix F. These languages, Tolkien explains, have some sort of existence since I have composed them in some completeness, as well as their history and account of their relationship. They are intended, A to be definitely of a European kind in style and structure, not in detail, and B to be specially pleasant. The former, obviously. The style and structure, he says, is not difficult to achieve, but the latter being pleasant is more difficult since individuals personal predilections, especially in the phonetic structure of languages, varies widely even when modified by the imposed languages, including their so called native tongue.

[James Tauber]

If you can't please everyone, please the most important person.

[Alan Sisto]

I know where this is headed.

[James Tauber]

Yeah. Tolkien then says, I have therefore pleased myself good. Before adding that what he says is the archaic language of law, that would be Quenya is meant to be an Elvish Latin. Then he adds, it might be said to be composed on a Latin basis with two other main ingredients that happen to give me phonaesthetic pleasure, Finnish and Greek. It's however, less consonantal than any of the three.

[Alan Sisto]

Now that's interesting. I knew about the Finnish influence. You kind of see the Finnish influence. I never knew about the Greek influence.

[James Tauber]

Yeah. Greek was one of his favorite languages. He did definitely have preferences for certain languages. And new Greek, well, it started it.

[Alan Sisto]

In, yeah, classics, of course.

[James Tauber]

Yeah. I mean, he started off as a classicist.

[Alan Sisto]

Latin and Greek were his. Yeah, exactly.

[James Tauber]

But Greek in particular was, was what he, he loved within that. But yet the other interesting thing here is this question of whether there are universal phone aesthetics. Right. He makes a point here that there's variation, people have personal predilections, and he went with what he liked the most.

[Alan Sisto]

Right.

[James Tauber]

But there's been some interest over the years about whether there are characteristics of languages that are more universally preferred to others. And it's interesting, a lot of the research that I've read in this area does look in particular at constructed languages. And it seems to be fairly universal that Quenya is rated amongst the most attractive of languages by people that know nothing about Tolkien. They're just given words and told which do you like the sound of better than others? And so on. And Quenya consists. Rates extremely highly.

[Alan Sisto]

It is a beautiful language.

[James Tauber]

Exactly. So Tolkien, even though he acknowledges that there are, there is personal preference in this, I think he was also capturing some universals there about certain, certain sounds and sound combinations that we, we find attractive.

[Alan Sisto]

Oh, that's fantastic. Now, when it comes to Sundaran, which we mostly see in the names of people and places, he says that that is derived from an origin that it shares in common with Quenia. We talked about that last week with the split being kind of the whole reason why he had to write the Silmarillion is like, I need to write a story to explain why my languages fell apart. And then. But in the letter 144, he writes, but the changes have been deliberately devised to give it a linguistic character very like, though not identical with British Welsh, because that character is one that I find in some linguistic moods very attractive and because it seems to fit the rather Celtic type of legends and stories told of its speakers. Now, the Welsh influence again on Sindarin is relatively well known. It's something we've talked about before on the show.

[James Tauber]

Yep.

[Alan Sisto]

It's interesting that he mentions the Celtic types of legends because. Yeah, wasn't there like a proofreader or somebody who once criticized, I think it was the Silmarillion as being Celtic. And Tolkien dismissed it like he doesn't know what he's talking about.

[James Tauber]

Yes, it was, it was, it was a reader for a reader. Alan and Unwin gave the feedback about the eye splitting Celtic names and he had to point out they're not Celtic. But yeah, of course, it's really fascinating that he loved Finnish and Greek as we read and loved Welsh and conceived of a language that was Welsh like, and a language that was Finnish like. But of course, Finnish and Welsh are not related to one another.

[Alan Sisto]

Not at all. No.

[James Tauber]

But in his thinking, he wanted them to be related to one another and.

[Alan Sisto]

He could make some rules, some sound change rules.

[James Tauber]

Exactly. And that's in a sense. Exactly. And that's in a sense the whole genesis of all this. Right. It's kind of like, I like Finnish, I like Welsh. What if I made two languages that were actually related to one another, but one had the qualities of Finnish and the other had the qualities of Welsh? And then event stories around.

[Alan Sisto]

Right.

[James Tauber]

A split happened. But it's interesting again, this kind of.

[Alan Sisto]

Suggests instead, what if I just ordered a pizza and forgot about it? I mean, my goodness, what a crazy thing to think. Like, what if I. What if you what? What if you what now? What if I come up with an entire language that has finished influence and an entire language.

[James Tauber]

The really interesting thing though is it's not until Lord of the Rings that he decides to make the Welsh like language associated with the Gray Elves. Because all through the early legendarium, the Welsh like language is Noldoran. Oh, Gnomish. Gnomish originally. And then Noldoran, spoken by the Noldor.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah.

[James Tauber]

Right. So what's interesting to me is that he. The language is even more important than the particular stories told. He could shift the language to a different set of stories. I'm all of a sudden going to change the backstory to this Welsh language. I'm going to keep the Welsh language.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah. The language is going to stay the.

[James Tauber]

But now I'm going to translate it over to the. The. The Gray Elves. And.

[Alan Sisto]

And that is amazing. Yeah.

[James Tauber]

Which is, I'm wondering, when he says, seems to fit the rather Celtic type of legends and stories told by its speakers, is he suggesting there, that there's something a little bit more Celtic about the. The Gray Elves.

[Alan Sisto]

The Gray Elves, maybe.

[James Tauber]

I wonder.

[Alan Sisto]

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[James Tauber]

Thankfully the PPP has an amazing listener community. They're always coming up with great questions and discussions across all our social media spaces. Check out our Common Room on Facebook, our dedicated subreddit, Twitter and more now on Facebook.

[Alan Sisto]

Just look for the Prancing Pony Podcast. Follow the page to get the news, but you're going to want to join the group to get involved in some.

[James Tauber]

Great discussions on Twitter, Instagram, Bluesky, Twitch, TikTok and YouTube. We're @prancingpony podcast or if you prefer Reddit, find us there at R prancingponypod.

[Alan Sisto]

And if you want daily Tolkien content, check out today's Tolkien Times on the PPP YouTube channel and on all your favorite podcast apps. That's my short format daily show with everything from Middle Earth Map Monday to Silmarillion Saturday. And there's my new twice weekly streaming of all fun things Middle Earth on the PPP plays. Be sure to check both of them out on the YouTube channel for all the PPP productions at YouTube.com prancingponypod we have a whole lot more on translation to get through. James, would you pick up right after that?

[James Tauber]

Translation of this kind is of course, usual, because, inevitable in any narrative dealing with the past, it seldom proceeds any further. But I have gone beyond it. I have also translated all Westeron names according to their senses. When English names or titles appear in this book, it is an indication that names in the common speech were current at the time beside or instead of those in alien, usually Elvish languages. The Westron names were, as a rule, translations of older names, as Rivendell, Horwell, Silverlode, Langstrand, the Enemy, the Dark Tower. Some differed in meaning as Mount Doom for Orodruin, Burning Mountain, or Mirkwood for Taur I n Daedelos, Forest of the Great Fear. A few were alterations of Elvish names, as Lune and Brandywine, derived from Lloon and Baranduin. This procedure perhaps needs some defence. It seemed to me that to present all the names in their original forms would obscure an essential feature of the times, as perceived by the Hobbits, whose point of view I was mainly concerned to preserve the contrast between a widespread language, to them as ordinary and habitual as English is to us, and the living remains of far older and more reverent tongues. All names, if merely transcribed, would seem to modern readers equally remote. For instance, if the Elvish name Imladris and the Westeron translation Carnigal had both been left unchanged. But to refer to Rivendell as Imladris was as if one now was to speak of Winchester as Camelot, except that the identity was certain. While in Rivendell there still dwelt a Lord of Renown far older than Arthur would be, were he still king at Winchester today. The name of the Shire, Susa, and all other places of the Hobbits have thus been Englished. This was seldom difficult, since such names were commonly made up of elements similar to those used in our simpler English place names, either words still current, like hill or field, or a little worn down like ton, beside, town. But some were derived, as already noted, from old Hobbit words no longer in use, and these have been represented by similar English things, such as witch or bottle dwelling or Mitchell. Great.

[Alan Sisto]

I love that this is such a fun passage to get into, and because now we're moving into Tolkien's translation choices, specifically how he handled place names, and these he says he translated according to their senses, and that's kind of a central concept here. Everything's translated by sense.

[James Tauber]

Yeah, exactly. Explaining that often Westron names were themselves translations of older names, giving several examples. And he talks about Rivendell, the Sindarin name Imladris means deep Dale of the cleft. So when Tolkien translates the Westron, which he provides later as Carningal, he translates it as Riven Cloven Dell.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, it's. If that's what it means, let's figure out how to represent that in English. The other examples he provides are similar in nature. Right. Horwell Hoar, for grayish white and, well, for spring or stream is the translation of the Sindarin myth Athel, from myth meaning pale gray, like Mithrandir, the Gray Wanderer, and Athel, Spring or Source. They're all like that. I mean, we could go on, but we won't.

[James Tauber]

Indeed, I, although I am in my current class on language, this is exactly what we do. I love it.

[Alan Sisto]

Absolutely love it. But, yeah, we'd be here for four hours today.

[James Tauber]

Well, yeah, exactly. Or eight hours is how long the class goes for. But anyway, Tolkien acknowledges that sometimes the meanings change a bit. Orodruin, Burning Mountain, or Mountain of Red Flame becomes Mount Doom. But in fairness, the men of Gondor called it Amon Amath, which is Hill of Doom or Fate, anyway.

[Alan Sisto]

Right. So. And then, of course, beside those translations by sense, some were just phonetic alterations of Elvish names as well.

[James Tauber]

Now, I'm not sure why Tolkien thinks his method of translation by sense needs defending, but his defense needs some defense.

[Alan Sisto]

Really? Now, who says? Because I don't think it does. But anyway.

[James Tauber]

But he defends it anyway. Giving the names in their actual Western instead of in English with a sense of the same meaning would make all the languages alien and strange.

[Alan Sisto]

And I think this is where it's important, because that conflicts with one of his primary goals. He wants to maintain the Hobbit's perspective where there is a common, widespread language alongside these remnants, these bits, these. What does he call them? Like sort of living remnants of ancient and more Reverend languages. And he gives that specific example of Imladis. Look, I could have just called it Carnegul, since that's the Western translation.

[James Tauber]

Right? But by giving it a name like Rivendell, translating Imlandris by sense or meaning, it gives us this beautiful Camelot Arthur analogy that it gives. Right. It was an analogy that was already strongly in place in F2, and I quote to refer to Rivendell as Imladrist. Change to Imladris was to men and Hobbits, as if one now was to speak of Winchester as Camelot, save the identity, was certain, while in Rivendell there still Dwelt a Lord of Renown older than Arthur would be where? He's still living in Winchester today.

[Alan Sisto]

Exactly. So, I mean, he'd obviously thought about that long before now. Of course, at that time, he hadn't landed on the final Westron name of Cardinghul. It was instead Carbondur, unintentionally making the point that both names would be quite alien and utterly meaningless, and that really only in this translation, by sense, could Tolkien preserve that Hobbit point of view.

[James Tauber]

Exactly. Then we move on to the names of some of the Hobbit words, starting with the Shire, which he says they'd referred to as Susa. Not the Suza.

[Alan Sisto]

Not the Susa. That would be Suzat. Certainly not the Suzat. They might call it the Susa.

[James Tauber]

That's true. Well, but not the Suzat translation.

[Alan Sisto]

Yes.

[James Tauber]

And while he's here, he doesn't go into any more on Sousa for Shire, other than to say it's been Englished. I love that.

[Alan Sisto]

I love that that's been English.

[James Tauber]

He does spend some more time on it, though. In the draft F2, in in peoples, there, he writes the Shire. Seems to me very adequately to translate the Hobbit Suzat, since this word was now only used by them with reference to their country. Though originally it had meant a sphere of occupation as of the land claimed by a family or clan of office or business. In Gondor, the word susa was still applied to the division of the realm, such as Anorian, Ithelian, Lebanon, for which, in Noldorian, the word khan was used.

[Alan Sisto]

I love that the word Susa, which just means like a region, what is a sphere of occupation, was still used in Gondor. There's a piece of the common speech still used. You know, we're going to go to the various. You know, whatever the plural. We're going to go take a look at the northern Susa of Anorian North. That word was still there. And the Shire just turns it into, you know, using the definite article, instead of the Susa, it's Susat. Right. That's what the T at the end means.

[James Tauber]

Yeah. And it occurs to me that that relates nicely to what it's referred to as in the Hobbit, because it's not called the Shire in the Hobbit. No, it's just referred to as the country, our land, basically. Yeah, The.

[Alan Sisto]

The land, because that's how Hobbits refer to things. The water the hill. Exactly.

[James Tauber]

Yes.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah. We don't get the name of Shire until the Lord of the Rings. Speaking of things, we also don't get, I don't think, until the Lord of the Rings. Since the idea of the farthings, I think that's not in the Hobbit. I may be wrong, so I'm willing to be proven that way. But we get an explanation of farthing in F2 that I really like here. He says, similarly, farthing has been used for the four divisions of the Shire because the Hobbit word tharni was an old word for quarter, seldom used in ordinary language, where the word for quarter was tharantin, fourth part. In Gondor, tharni was used for a silver coin, the fourth part of the Kastar in Noldorin, the Kanath, or fourth part of the Mirian. So just like farthing is also currency in the real world, he translated that. I mean, I love how in depth he goes on this. It's just so nerdy. I love it. Absolutely love it.

[James Tauber]

Now, these Hobbit place names we're talking says seldom difficult to translate in this way because their names were made up from elements that we would also use in simple English. Place names. Places ending in hill, field, ton for town, et cetera.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah.

[James Tauber]

And for place names that came from words no longer in use, Tolkien used English words that also had archaic origins. Which bottle for dwelling or Mitchell. Great.

[Alan Sisto]

I love that. I mean, just, you know, like, all right, this. This element in common speech is archaic. It's a word that's no longer used except in this place name. So I'm going to use an archaic English element. It just again, representing every little aspect of the common speech in English somehow. But of course, the technique had to be modified for surnames, last names, since names were inherited and often centuries old. A lot of them had origins as jesting nicknames, but then they stuck around. Or as names of plants and trees, which of course, is very Hobbit like.

[James Tauber]

He says these weren't hard to translate, but he hints at more difficulty for names that had forgotten meaning and those he didn't so much as translate as Anglicize, the spelling took for took as an example.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah. Now, if you think we're content with that, you're wrong. Not when we have the draft of F2 available to us, where he writes that the personal names of the Hobbits were much more awkward. And he goes on, rightly or wrongly, I have attempted to translate these also into English terms or to substitute equivalents wherever Possible. Many of the family names have more or less obvious meanings in the common speech, such as good enough. By the way, I love that. That there was a name good enough. We didn't get that. In the finished version of the Lord of the Rings, there's nobody named good enough.

[James Tauber]

Clearly.

[Alan Sisto]

What a great name. Yeah, exactly. He goes on with other names. Bracegirdle, Proudfoot, Burroughs and the like. And these can fairly be treated in the same way as the place names.

[James Tauber]

No one's going to argue with the idea that if a guy's name is supposed to mean to his peers hornblower, then it's better to simply call him Hornblower. Even if his name in Westeron was Rasputa, a meaningless sound form.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah. The problem with that, though, is it brings us to this unique situation of mixing and matching. As Tolkien writes, if a large part of the names are thus Anglicized, the rest must be made to fit. For a mixture of English and alien names would give a wholly false impression.

[James Tauber]

And I want to remember that quote when we come to the malbag question. Yes, because it's such an important thing that turns out to kind of have some interesting implications for translating to languages other than English. Anyway, coming back to Tolkien's translation into English, it's the borderline cases that are problematic, as you said. Right. One of these is Baggins, which is actually in Hobbit or common speech Labingi. Tolkien explains it is by no means certain that this name is really connected with common speech Laban, a bag, but it was believed to be so. And one may compare Laban neck bag end as the name of the residents of Bungo Baggins. Bunga la bingi. That's why Tolkien explains he translates Labingi as Baggins, saying that he thinks it gives a very close equivalent in readily appreciable modern terms.

[Alan Sisto]

It also gives an opportunity for some really good word nerdery and play on things like, you know, the end of a bag and, you know, when he has the conversation with Smaug and the hobbits or, you know, jokes with the Sackville Baggins is because of a sack in a bag. And, I mean, it's just all sorts of other fun things.

[James Tauber]

Absolutely.

[Alan Sisto]

Another troublesome name that Tolkien says was Tuk T U C. He says that according to Tuk traditions, tuka was an archaic word meaning daring quote. But this appears to be a wholly unfounded guess, and I have in this case been content with Anglicization of the form to took.

[James Tauber]

What I find fascinating about both that and the the belief that, that, yeah, Labingi has something to do with a bag. It ties in with a very real world phenomenon, which is people come up with these folk etymologies all the time of. Of what. What their name means and so on. And they don't always get it right, but it becomes part of their identity.

[Alan Sisto]

And it's just made up from old cloth. But hey, that's okay. The whole cloth makes a bag. So, you know. Yeah.

[James Tauber]

But let's move on now to see how he dealt with given or first names.

[Alan Sisto]

All right. I have treated Hobbit first names as far as possible in the same way. To their maid children, Hobbits commonly gave the names of flowers or jewels. To their man children, they usually gave names that had no meaning at all in their daily language. And some of their women's names were similar of this kind are Bilbo, Bungo, Polo, Lotho, Tanta, Nina and so on. There are many inevitable but accidental resemblances to names we now have or know. For instance, Otho, Odo, Drogo, Dora, Kora and the like. These names I have retained, though I have usually Anglicized them by altering their endings, since in Hobbit names A was a masculine ending and O and E were feminine. In some old families, especially those of Fallohyde origin, such as the Tukes and the Bulgers, it was, however, the custom to give high sounding first names, since most of these seem to have been drawn from legends of the past of men as well as of Hobbits. And many, while now meaningless to Hobbits, closely resembled the names of men in the Vale of Anduin, or in Dale, or in the Mark. I have turned them into those old names, largely of Frankish and Gothic origin, that are still used by us or are met in our histories. I have thus at any rate preserved the often comic contrast between the first names and surnames of which the Hobbits themselves were well aware. Names of classical origin have rarely been used for the nearest equivalents to Latin and Greek in Shire lore were the Elvish tongues, and these the Hobbits seldom used in nomenclature. Few of them at any time knew the languages of the kings, as they called them. The names of the Bucklanders were different from those of the rest of the Shire. The folk of the Marish and their offshoot across the Brandywine were in many ways peculiar, as has been told, it was from the former language of the Southern Stours, no doubt that they inherited many of their very odd names. These I have usually left unaltered, for if queer now they were queer in their own day. They had a style that we should perhaps feel vaguely to be Celtic. Since the survival of traces of the older language of the Stours and the Bremen resembled the survival of Celtic elements in England, I've sometimes imitated the latter in my translation. Thus, Bree, Coombe, Archet and Chetwood are modeled on relics of British nomenclature chosen according to sense. Bree, Hill, Chet. But only one personal name has been altered in this way. Meriadoc was chosen to fit the fact that this character's shortened name, Kali, meant in the Westron Jolly, though it was actually an abbreviation of the now unmeaning Buckland name Kalimak. I have not used names of Hebraic or similar origin in my transpositions. Nothing in Hobbit names corresponds to this element in our names. Short names such as Sam, Tom, Tim, Matt were common as abbreviations of actual Hobbit names such as Tomba, Tolma, Mata and the like. But Sam and his father Ham were really called Ban and Ran. These were shortenings of Banazir and Ranugad, originally nicknames meaning halfwise, simple and stay at home. But being words that had fallen out of colloquial use, they remained as traditional names in certain families. I have therefore tried to preserve these features by using Samwise and Hamfast, modernizations of ancient English Samwise and Hemfest, which corresponded closely in meaning so much there, so much to unpack.

[James Tauber]

So again, this meticulous work, so detailed. But he did which. Which we'll get to. So. So we've now gotten to the fun and often funny Hobbit first names, which Tolkien says he tried to treat in the same way, that is translation by sense when possible, and simple Anglicization of the names when there is no sense to translate.

[Alan Sisto]

Then we're reminded that girls are often given flower or jewel names. Think Marigold, Daisy, Ruby and the like. And Tolkien gives us a fun example in F2, explaining, I have translated Homanulus by lobelia because although I do not know precisely what flower is intended, Hamanulus appears to have been usually small and blue and cultivated in gardens. And the word seems to have been a gardener's rather than a popular name.

[James Tauber]

I love the fact that he constructs that whole invented reason for it as well.

[Alan Sisto]

I know it's fantastic. And for a name, this doesn't even make it out of F2.

[James Tauber]

Right, right, right. Boys, on the other hand, were often given names that had no meaning at all. Literal nonsense names. Some girls had the misfortune of receiving similar names. We're given examples of these nonsense names, including Bilbo and Bungo, as well as examples of names that Tolkien said bear an accidental resemblance to names we know.

[Alan Sisto]

First off, then, do we believe him that they are accidentally resembling real world names?

[James Tauber]

Is this another retcon?

[Alan Sisto]

That's what I'm thinking. I don't think this is accidental.

[James Tauber]

Exactly. Why are the trolls called William and William Burton?

[Alan Sisto]

Tom? No, we do not believe him. Second, the names that he gives as like accidentally resembling real world names aren't exactly commonplace. Let's be honest. I have never known a Drogo in real life. I know it's a real name, but I've never known anybody named Drogo. And the only Dora I know of was an explorer. But does anybody remember Odo from Deep Space Nine?

[James Tauber]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Alan Sisto]

Rene Aborjonois.

[James Tauber]

Yeah, exactly.

[Alan Sisto]

But yeah, I mean, again, nobody really knows Drogo's or Odo's. Maybe Cora. Cora might be the only name that I've. Maybe I think I've met somebody named Cora. That's about it.

[James Tauber]

But so it's interesting. They're real names, only the ending has changed, which does happen a lot when languages, when words get moved from one language to another. Tolkien explains that when the hobbit name was similar to a real world name like this, he Anglicized the ending because male names ended in A and female names ended in O and E. Now.

[Alan Sisto]

Wait just a second. Bilbo, Frodo. These end in O, not A. But those also aren't the names that bear accidental resemblances to real world names. So that's because that's. That's what he's talking about. There is these names that represent or that bear accidental resemblance. Had to get changed.

[James Tauber]

Yes. Plus he's talking about the names in common speech.

[Alan Sisto]

Oh yes, that's true.

[James Tauber]

Yeah. Hobbits would speak. He Anglicizes Otho and Odo with the O because that makes it male in English.

[Alan Sisto]

Right.

[James Tauber]

With Dora and Cora ending in A to symbolize the feminine nature of those names names, their real hobbit names were different.

[Alan Sisto]

That's true. And then he throws all this out the window for old families, especially those of Fallowhite origin like the Tukes. For them it was all about giving these high sounding first names like Paladin and Peregrine, drawn from Mannish and Hobbit legends.

[James Tauber]

And since these would often be of men from the Vales of Anduin or Dale or even the Mark, Tolkien has translated those names by sense as well, using words that similarly relate to English words with Gothic and Frankish origins. This also maintains what Tolkien says is the often comic contrast between their first and last names. Like Peregrine Took, for example.

[Alan Sisto]

Exactly. Fancy sounding first name Took. Yeah. So he also explains why he uses Gothic and Frankish names rather than, say, Latin or Greek names. Those latter two, Latin or Greek, would be more comparable to the Elvish tongues we know especially. Right. Like, we've talked at length about Quenya being the Elvish. Latin Hobbits just didn't use those words in naming people or places. And it may likely be because so few of them spoke any of the languages of the kings.

[James Tauber]

Exactly, yeah. There's one more exception. The Hobbits who lived in the Buckland on the other side of the Brandywine from the rest of the Shire. This would primarily be the Brandy Bucks in their kin folk there and those in the Marish are considered peculiar by the rest of the Hobbits in the Shire. We've read that from the. We read that from the quote before.

[Alan Sisto]

Right. Again in the Old Forest. That's a dark and dangerous place. Yeah. Now, these names Tolkien has typically left unchanged because, after all, they were strange to the rest of the Hobbits, again, trying to preserve that Hobbit point of view. So they should also be strange to us. Though he does add that they should have a vaguely Celtic feel. What does that mean, James? Help me with that, Mr. Language Man.

[James Tauber]

Well, I think we. We do associate certain words as sounding the examples he gives of. I think Comb was one of the examples and so on and Chetwood and stuff like that. I do think we have an intuitive sense you would hear. I mean, if you think about people in the U.S. for example, probably have an intuitive sense when they come across a place name that's of Native American origin.

[Alan Sisto]

Oh, yeah, yeah. You're saying you can just sort of.

[James Tauber]

You can just sort of say, oh, that's probably, you know, Massachusetts, something like that. Right. And so it's the same sort of thing, Right. That I think you intuitively pick up, even if you're not a historical linguist, that there are certain regions of Britain where the place names sound more Celtic or they sound more Danish or they, you know, sound more.

[Alan Sisto]

So maybe somebody who's a native who lives in the UK would pick up that distinction a lot more than somebody here in the States, I'd say.

[James Tauber]

So that makes sense.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, I would understand that.

[James Tauber]

Speaking of Celtic origins, Tolkien draws an analogy. Since the older language of the Stours in the Marysch and Buckland and the language of the Men of Bree, which was distantly connected with Dunlendish, initially resembled the survival of Celtic elements in England. He's gone for something similar. And again, as I said before, Bree as an example. Combe, Archer, Chetwode, they're all based on old British names translated again by sense.

[Alan Sisto]

Okay. Surviving Celtic elements. Right. And he's done that almost exclusively with place names, but he says that he has done it with one singular first name, Meriadoc or Meriadoc. I've. Where should I be putting the stress on that?

[James Tauber]

We're not told because it's Hobbit night. We're not told how stress works.

[Alan Sisto]

It doesn't fit in the. The rules of pronunciation.

[James Tauber]

Well, also, I mean, it's not even a. This is his translated name anyway. It's an English name.

[Alan Sisto]

It's not his Western.

[James Tauber]

So it would follow the rules of English stress.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah. So the shortened version of his real common speech name, which is Kali, that's. The shortened version meant jolly or gay, even though it was just an abbreviation of a meaningless Buckland name, Kalimak. So Kalimak didn't necessarily mean anything related to jolly or gay. But because Kalimak got shortened to Kali and Kali had a meaning of jolly or gay, Mary ended up being the shortened version of Meriadoc.

[James Tauber]

Exactly. Or put the other way, he constructed Meriadoc to be a name that could be shortened to Mary.

[Alan Sisto]

It could be shortened to Mary.

[James Tauber]

So the short version would have the same meaning as the short version.

[Alan Sisto]

That makes sense. Right, he starts with the shortened version because he would have been called Kali all the time anyway. Nobody would have bothered calling him Kalimak most of the time.

[James Tauber]

Right.

[Alan Sisto]

Except maybe his mother when he was in trouble.

[James Tauber]

Yeah, and presumably he avoided the double M. So if he just copied over the muck bit and translated Kalimuk to Mary muck. Well, there's a river in the U.S. but yeah, he altered it slightly. But the idea is to match the short. The meaning of the short word, the connection.

[Alan Sisto]

Because the long name doesn't have a meaning, it's now meaningless.

[James Tauber]

Exactly. Right, before we move on to Sam's name, I did want to add a bit from the draft F2. That's useful here. Tolkien admits that what he did with Hobbit names entails, of course, far reaching alteration of the actual phonetics forms. But he feels it's just as legitimate as the Hornblower example he gave earlier.

[Alan Sisto]

Absolutely. Or switching to the bigger picture, indeed, than translating the dialogue of the Red Book into English, whereby naturally its true sound is changed and many of Its verbal points are obscured. But he adds, he's done all this work, quote with some care, pointing out the fondness of families for runs of similar names or of fathers for giving to their sons names that either alliterated with their own or had a similar ending has been duly represented. And yeah, one look at the family trees of the Shire, we'll show you that.

[James Tauber]

Right, exactly. It's interesting that he. So his overriding feature is the sense translating the sense over.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah.

[James Tauber]

But it was also important for him to bring across certain characteristics of it. Even though in many cases the actual phonetics has changed, he wants to still capture things like the alliteration of names and so on.

[Alan Sisto]

What's crazy is that he's not actually translating a language, he's translating another language that he created. Again, we're talking about this like he's actually translating a real language. And it's like I keep coming back to the idea that you don't have to do that, but you did. It's really amazing. Yeah.

[James Tauber]

Finally, Tolkien explains that he hasn't used anything connected with Hebraic names, and that names that might seem to suggest otherwise, Sam, Tom, Tim, Matt are simply abbreviations of actual hobbits names. Then we get to the really cool story about Sam's name and his father's name.

[Alan Sisto]

Love this.

[James Tauber]

Sam was actually Ban, short for Banazir, and Ham was actually Ran, short for Ranugad.

[Alan Sisto]

But those names which were originally long time ago nicknames, had meanings as nicknames. Banazir meant half wise, simple. While Ranugad meant stay at home. Now the nickname aspect over time lost its meaning. They just became traditional names, but without meaning over the years or even centuries.

[James Tauber]

But Tolkien tried to preserve this unusual history of an old nickname, once defined now meaningless, with the names of Samwise and Hamfaast, which themselves are modern versions of the Old English names. Some and Harmfast, which carry those same original meanings of half wise or simple and stay at home.

[Alan Sisto]

And that especially Sam's name, brings me back to the epilogue and the King's letter that Elessar wrote. In it, he said that he desires to greet there all his friends in a special he desires to see Master Samwise, mayor of the Shire and Rose his wife. But in the Sindarin, he included Sam's name in Sindarin Perha, meaning half wise. But he adds this which translates as who ought to be called full wise. I love that. Unless our translating the common speech, which was of course Banazir, into Sindarin as Perhael and saying you shouldn't be Perha, you should be Panthael. You should be full wise. I just love that little. It's just a tiny little thing. And of course we don't see it. But yet again, the King's letter, which was part of the epilogue, didn't make it in. But folks, that epilogue is fantastic. Worth reading. And Don and I did a couple episodes to start season nine on it, so go back to those. In the meantime, we want to move on to sort of the predecessor to this right? The, the. You know, we've talked about English representing common speech, but what about its ancestral tongues? One of those is that of Rohan. James, would you read about what Tolkien did for translating the language of Rohan?

[James Tauber]

Having gone so far in my attempt to modernize and make familiar the language and names of Hobbits, I found myself involved in a further process. The Mannish languages that were related to the Westron should, it seemed to me, be turned into forms related to English. The language of Rohan I have accordingly made to resemble ancient English, since it was related both more distantly to the common speech and very closely to the former tongue of the Northern Hobbits, and was, in comparison with the Westrust, archaic. In the Red Book it is noted in several places that when Hobbits heard the speech of Rohan, they recognized many words and felt the language to be akin to their own, so that it seemed absurd to leave the recorded names and words of the Rohirrim in a wholly alien style. In several cases I have modernized the forms and spelling of place names in Rohan, as in Dunharrow or Snowbourn, but I have not been consistent, for I have followed the Hobbits. They altered the names that they heard in the same way, if they were made of elements that they recognized, or if they resembled place names in the Shire. But many they left alone, as I have done, for instance, in Edoras the courts. For the same reasons, a few personal names have been modernized as Shadowfax and Wormtongue. This assimilation also provided a convenient way of representing the peculiar local Hobbit words that were of northern origin. They have been given in the forms that lost English words might well have had if they had come down to our day. Thus Matham is meant to recall ancient English Martham, and so to represent the relationship of the actual Hobbit caste to Rohanese Kastu. Similarly, Smile or Smile Burrow is a likely form for a descendant of Smegel, and represents well the relationship of Hobbit Tran to Rohanes Trahan, Smeagol, and Deagle are equivalents made up in the same way for the names Trahald burrowing, worming in and Narhal Secret in the Northern tongues.

[Alan Sisto]

I love that we finally get that in depth explanation of the connection between Rohan's language represented by Old English in the text as we kept talking about last week. Rohan representative. Yes, and the Common Speech represented by Modern English. And Tolkien starts by acknowledging that any language of men related to the Westeron should be turned into forms related to English.

[James Tauber]

And again, this is going to come up in now question.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, but.

[James Tauber]

But the Ro. The Rohan's language therefore resembles ancient English, with Tolkien pointing out that it was related both more distantly to the Common Speech and very closely to the former tongue of the Northern Hobbits and was in comparison with the Westron, archaic since, after all, we've seen a few places where the Hobbits recognized many words and felt Rohirric to be akin to their own language. Tolkien argues it seemed absurd to leave the recorded names and words of the Rohirrim in a wholly alien style.

[Alan Sisto]

Seems absurd indeed. It's interesting because this whole conceit of I'm translating all of this into English, which of course he has to do. He's a philologist. He knows that this, you know, these ancient peoples weren't speaking English the way we speak it today. But all of this has led Tolkien to do a ton of extra work to all these other languages that are connected. Is it any wonder that authors don't address this particular aspect of world building? I mean, it's one thing to do a conlang, it's another thing to say I'm translating all of this into English and therefore I'm translating all these other things.

[James Tauber]

Right.

[Alan Sisto]

That's a ton of work.

[James Tauber]

Yes, exactly.

[Alan Sisto]

This is wild.

[James Tauber]

He does concede that he's modernized the spellings of place names, but not consistently. And the lack of consistency was completely on purpose.

[Alan Sisto]

That is wild. I mean, part of me thinks that's an excuse. And then I realized, no, he's doing this intentionally for release.

[James Tauber]

And it all comes down to the Hobbit's point of view. Right, because the Hobbits altered names the same way inconsistently or sometimes left them alone. He's done the same. Right. The same rule applies to names like Shadowfax and Wormtail.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, that's really amazing. We do get a very important footnote here. Because of the Old English connection, a lot of readers, and I was guilty of this at first, sort of assume the Rohirrim are basically Anglo Saxons on horseback I mean, I. I kind of. It's an easy reduction to make, an easy mistake to make. But Tolkien explains that this translation choice that he's made doesn't reflect at all on the nature of the Rohirrim. The footnote reads, this linguistic procedure does not imply that the Rohirrim closely resembled the ancient English otherwise in culture or art, in weapons or modes of warfare, except in a general way, due to their circumstances. A simpler and more primitive people living in contact with a higher and more venerable culture and occupying lands that had once been part of its domain.

[James Tauber]

I think it's really interesting that he takes the time to point out this potential misunderstanding.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah.

[James Tauber]

Even though it's a misunderstanding that he would not have seen yet, but has perpetuated since it absolutely has. He way through to the Force. Peter Jackson.

[Alan Sisto]

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

[James Tauber]

So it's interesting that he was. He took. He was at pains to point out. Don't assume that the culture and art carries over as well. This is just a linguistic analogy, not a cultural analogy.

[Alan Sisto]

Right. And. And I also like that he carries that into, like what. What they do have in common with the Anglo Saxons, that they are a simpler, more primitive people living in contact with the Gondorians, in this case, the higher and more venerable culture. And I don't think I've ever thought of this before. Occupying lands that had once been part of its domain. Sort of going back to this idea of the Roman Empire.

[James Tauber]

Yes.

[Alan Sisto]

I love that because I never made that connection.

[James Tauber]

Yep, yep.

[Alan Sisto]

And it's like, wait a minute. The Anglo Saxons living in lands that had once been part of the Roman Empire, just as the Rohirrim are living in lands that were once part of Gondor. Really cool. Absolutely love that.

[James Tauber]

In F2, we actually get a glimpse at real Rohirric. First, Tolkien explains that he only used compound names like Eomer and Halifurion, when the originals in Rohirric were also compound. That's when he explains that the element eo, which so often appears not unnaturally being an old word, means meaning horse among people devoted to horses, represents an element loho, lo, of the same sense. Thus, Eotheod, horsefolk, or horse land, translates lotur theoden, as many of the other royal names, is an old word for king, corresponding to Rohan, Turak.

[Alan Sisto]

That whole sidebar on the language of the Men of Rohan gives Tolkien a chance to explain what he calls the peculiar local Hobbit words that were of northern origin. And this is where his philological sense really comes into play, because he gives these words, the forms that lost English words might well have had if they'd survived into Modern English.

[James Tauber]

It reminds me of his comment about dwarves.

[Alan Sisto]

Well, yeah, that's why he ends up talking about the dwarves.

[James Tauber]

Exactly. Right. When he brings up Dvorrows as how it would have been had it. Had it continued. He actually does that with Mathem. It's meant to seem like the Old English Martham. And this connection between the two reflects the actual connection between Rohirric Kastu and the Hobbit word cast. So again, it's this analogy. What would it have been like for Hobbits, giving us that perspective?

[Alan Sisto]

Basically. That's why for us, what do we hear when we hear Old English words that have some slight, sometimes a similarity and a connection, but not very often. And you know, this isn't like Middle English, which I almost wonder, like, would he have had another group of people speaking a language in between that he could have represented with Middle English? Would have been interesting. I don't know. Yeah. So this is also where we get the amazing connection between smile. Right. The word for a hobbit hole or burrow, and smeaga, the Old English word for burrow, a place to creep into. And how this represents a connection between Rohirric Trahan and Hobbit Tran.

[James Tauber]

And finally, Smeagol and Deagle are equivalents for Trahald, which meant burrowing, worming in, and nahald, meaning secret in the old northern tongues from which Rohirric is descended.

[Alan Sisto]

I love that. It's so much detail and so much explanation. All totally unnecessary, but absolutely welcomed by word nerds like us.

[James Tauber]

On WhatsApp, no.

[Alan Sisto]

One can see or hear your personal messages.

[Louis Kiner]

Whether it's a voice call message or.

[Alan Sisto]

Sending a password to WhatsApp, it's all just this. So whether you're sharing the streaming password in the family chat or trading those late night voice messages that could basically become a podcast, your personal messages stay between you, your friends and your family. No one else, not even us. WhatsApp message privately with everyone. With the Venmo debit card, you can Venmo everything.

[James Tauber]

Your favorite band's merch. You can Venmo this or their next show, you can Venmo that.

[Alan Sisto]

Visit Venmo Me Debit to learn more.

[James Tauber]

The Venmo MasterCard is issued by the Bancorp bank and a pursuant to license by MasterCard International Incorporated, the card may be used everywhere.

[Alan Sisto]

MasterCard is accepted. Venmo purchase restrictions apply. Folks, if you're enjoying the ppp, please consider supporting the show by joining the Fellowship of the Podcast. That gives me the time and resources that I need to work on making this show the best that it can be. And when you join, you become part of an amazing Discord community. You get live episode recordings, Discord Hangouts every month, you get episode postscripts, you can get AD free episodes, free merch, and more.

[James Tauber]

You can also become part of our Questions After Nightfall episodes or even join us as a guest in the North Wing. So Please go to patreon.com prancingponypod to show your support and join the Fellowship of the Podcast.

[Alan Sisto]

And of course, you can always help us out by giving us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts and a rating on Spotify. And please recommend us to your friends.

[James Tauber]

Okay, now let's move on to some more retconning and dealing with the Language of the Dwarves and the Men of the Dale.

[Alan Sisto]

The still more northerly language of Dale is in this book, seen only in the names of the dwarves that came from that region, and so used the language of the men there, taking their outer names in that tongue. It may be observed that in this book, as in the Hobbit, the form dwarves is used. Although the dictionaries tell us that the plural of dwarf is dwarfs, it should be Dwaros or Dwaros, if singular and plural had each gone its own way down the years, as have man and men, or goose and geese. But we no longer speak of a dwarf as often as we do of a man, or even of a goose, and memories have not been fresh enough among men to keep hold of a special plural for a race now abandoned to folk tales, where at least a shadow of truth is preserved, or at least to nonsense stories, in which they have become mere figures of fun. But in the Third Age, something of their old character and power is still glimpsed, if already a little dimmed. These are the descendants of the Naugrim of the Elder Days, in whose hearts still burns the ancient fire of Aule the Smith, and the embers smolder of their long grudge against the elves, and in whose hands still lives the skill in work of stone that none have surpassed. It is to mark this that I have ventured to use the form Dwarves, and remove them a little, perhaps, from the sillier tales of these latter days. Dwarrows would have been better, but I have used that form only in the name Dwarodelf, to represent the name of Moria in the common speech Furunargian, for that meant dwarf delving, and yet was already a word of antique form. But Moria is an Elvish name and given without love for the Eldar, though they might at need in their bitter wars with the dark power and his servants. Contrive fortresses underground were not dwellers in such places of choice. They were lovers of the green earth and the lights of heaven. And Moria in their tongue means the black chasm. But the dwarves themselves, and this name at least was never kept secret, called it Khazad Dum, the mansion of the Khazad. For such is their own name for their own race, and has been so since Aule gave it to them at their making in the deeps of time.

[James Tauber]

Wonderful. It's a really short section here on the language of the men of Dale. After all, it's only examples are seen in the Dwarvish names like Thorin, Dwalin, Glowin. But it's also where we get that explanation we just mentioned earlier, the fact that the word dwarves is an intentional choice as opposed to the dictionary plural of dwarfs.

[Alan Sisto]

And again, something he had to explain to the typesetter, if I remember correctly, like, don't fix what I've met there on purpose.

[James Tauber]

Although he does, in a letter, I believe, admit that it was just a mistake on his part. So when he says, yeah, he does say that he. He. It was a lapse in grammar. So I think this was a little bit of retconning.

[Alan Sisto]

More retconning. I love it. Tolkien says he would rather have used the word dwarrows or dwarrows, because that's the form the plural would have taken, he says, if singular and plural had each gone its own way down the years. And he compares the man and men and goose and geese.

[James Tauber]

I just have to point out, just very briefly, that same phenomenon is what we see in Sindarin. If you look at Sindarin plurals, and the fact that the plural of amon becomes imin.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah.

[James Tauber]

And orod becomes erid and so on. That's exactly the same process.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah. Where the vowels change.

[James Tauber]

Yeah, exactly. That vowel shift, that eye mutation or umlaut, as Jakob Grimm called it, is what's going on in man, men and dwaras and dwaras. But it's also what happens in Sindarin. But apparently, as much as geese annoy us, we do talk about them more than dwarves, because Tolkien makes the point. And this is again a fantastic lesson in historical linguistics, isn't it? We no longer speak of a dwarf as often as we do of a man or of a goose. And memories have not been fresh enough for men to keep hold of a special plural for a race now abandoned to folktales where at least a shadow of truth is preserved. And we see this historically, where words are constantly used, they become a lot more robust.

[Alan Sisto]

Yes.

[James Tauber]

And so we get more archaic grammar. As a result. Words only become regularized when they become less frequent. Which is why we get most of the exceptions in English only happen in the common words because we use them so often. I love the fact that Tolkien gives us this little lesson in historical linguistics.

[Alan Sisto]

I know. He's always teaching us something from here. Though I have to say, Tolkien goes on a dwarf tangent, pointing out that these are a mighty people. We get a glimpse here of their old character and power, and I gotta say, this passage makes me love the Dwarves a bit more, and it's worth reading it a second time. This is amazing, right?

[James Tauber]

Did a Dwarf write this?

[Alan Sisto]

That's the thing, it does feel very dwarf, like we talked about last week with Galadriel, the scribe. Yeah, there's a Dwarven scribe going. Well, I've got to stick something in here. This is ridiculous. They stupid men. They don't know what they're writing about. Let me put this in. Descendants of the now Grimm of the Elder days, in whose heart still burns the ancient fire of Aura the Smith and the embers smolder of their long grudge against the Elves, and in whose hands still lives the skill and work of stone that none have surpassed. And here's your pen back. I'm done. It's killer prose for being buried in the appendix. Yeah, it's just gorgeous. Really florid and rich and just like, ooh, I like the Dwarves now.

[James Tauber]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's funny that, you know, this ancient, mighty race. Tolkien wants to distinguish these from the quote, sillier tales of these latter days, which, to be honest, he wants to do with Elves too. Yeah, arguably just about everyone.

[Alan Sisto]

That's true. Lift everybody up from this silliness of today. We also get a really cool explanation of the names of Moria. Now, Tolkien might not have been able to get away with calling them dwarrows in the text, but he did manage to get that theoretical plural in for the name Duodo Delph, which means dwarf delving, along with its common speech name, the word that it was translated from, which is Furu Nargion.

[James Tauber]

And the explanation that Moria is, as we've talked about often before, an Elvish name. Pretty sure the Dwarves wouldn't call their mansions Black Chasm.

[Alan Sisto]

No, I Don't think they would.

[James Tauber]

It's a lack of understanding really. Elves just don't get the underground lifestyle.

[Alan Sisto]

No, no, they just really like the green earth and the. The sun and all of that. Except for Thingol, he seemed to be pretty happy in Metagroth. I mean, I know that that's covered under the part of how sometimes they had to do this in their time. Finrod conflict.

[James Tauber]

Finrod must have been okay with it to a certain point.

[Alan Sisto]

Hewer of caves right. Now the dwarves, of course, they rightly call it Khazad Dum. The mansion of the Khazad. They're not going to call it right, you know, the subdivision of the Kaza. This is a mansion, for crying out loud. I also thought this was interesting. These two mentions of Aule here, right? The ancient fire of Aule that still burns in their hearts. And. And that Aule is said to have given them the name Kazad. These are the first and only times that Aule is mentioned in the Lord of the Rings. And that sort of went off on a tangent was like, let's take a look at mentions of Valar in the Lord of the Rings. I mean, other than Varda, who gets a lot of mention as either Varda or mostly as Elbereth.

[James Tauber]

Yep.

[Alan Sisto]

We don't get a lot.

[James Tauber]

That's really it. I mean it's, you know, Yavanna doesn't get a mention. Manwe doesn't get a mention. Of all people.

[Alan Sisto]

It's because there's no Vanyar writing this. Omg, Manwe. Yeah. We get the one mention of Orome where Theoden is compared to him. And it's one of my favorite bits in the text. We don't get an Ulmo sighting, We don't get a Mandas sighting. We don't get anything. But we do get Aule twice, which is interesting.

[James Tauber]

It's the Dwarvish interpolation here.

[Alan Sisto]

I think you're right. I'm beginning to suspect.

[James Tauber]

Gotta get outweigh in somewhere.

[Alan Sisto]

I gotta get this in here. Let me get the chisel and start fixing this. All right. Well, you know, he did want to raise the dwarves up from the silliness of, you know, today's stories. He also wanted to do that with the elves. James, would you go ahead and read the kind of short passage here on the translation of elves stuff.

[James Tauber]

Absolutely. Elves has been used to translate both Quindi, the speakers, the High Elven name of all their kind, and Eldar, the name of the three kindreds that sought for the Undying realm and came there at the beginning of days, save the Sindar. Only this old word was indeed the only one available, and was once fitted to apply to such memories of this people as men preserved, or to the making of men's minds. Not wholly dissimilar, but it has been diminished. And to many it may now suggest fancies, either pretty or silly, as unlike to the Quendi of old as are butterflies to the swift falcon. Not that any of the Quendi ever possessed wings of the body, as unnatural to them as to men. They were a race high and beautiful, the older children of the world. And among them, the Eldar, were as kings who now are gone. The people of the great Journey, the people of the stars. They were tall, fair of skin and grey eyed, though their locks were dark, save in the golden house of Finarfin. And their voices had more melodies than any mortal voice that now is heard. They were valiant, but the history of those that returned to Middle Earth in exile was grievous. And though it was in far off days crossed by the fate of the fathers, their fate is not that of men. Their dominion passed long ago, and they dwell now beyond the circles of the world and do not return.

[Alan Sisto]

And like so many things about the Elves, it always ends with a touch of sadness, doesn't it? You know?

[James Tauber]

Yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

So we get another short section. This time it's on the elves, a word that Tolkien says has been used to translate two Eldaran words, Quendi, which means the speakers. We talked about that earlier. That's the Quenya name for the entire race, but also Eldar, the name applied only to the three kindreds that began the journey to Valinor. Now, there's a parenthetical here that says save the Sindar, only that applies to the line right before it, the one and came there talking about Valinor at the beginning of days. The Sindar are still Eldar, they're just not Callaquendi.

[James Tauber]

Right.

[Alan Sisto]

They never saw the trees.

[James Tauber]

The trees, yeah. Tolkien seems to excuse his use of the word, saying it was indeed the only one available before launching into a defense of the Elf from modern interpretation, similar to how we just read he argued about the dwarves than the modern silliness, suggesting that the word elves now suggest fancies, either pretty or silly, saying that these are as different to actual Elves, quote, as our butterflies to the swift falcon.

[Alan Sisto]

I love how he has to insert, by the way. Not that Elves had any wings, just to clarify. Yeah, or Balrogs, for that matter. That's the footnote the unpublished footnote.

[James Tauber]

Yeah, but then we get this, you know, propaganda interpolation. The elves, all of them, were a race, high and beautiful, and the Eldar, those who started the journey west, were as kings among the other elves.

[Alan Sisto]

Some Eldar wrote that. We get some really clear physical descriptions. But Christopher has some clarifications, shall we say. First, tall, fair of skin, with gray eyes and dark hair. I do want to point out, you know, whether we're comfortable with this or not, this is not Tolkien using fair as a way to describe somebody's beauty, as he sometimes does, where we are still left guessing as to skin tone. He is actually saying fair of skin. So he's. He's describing these elves as, you know.

[James Tauber]

Fair skin and having dark hair. Oh, yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

And gray eyes and dark hair, of course. And that's relevant because of the exceptions.

[James Tauber]

Yes. He gives the exception of the house of Finarfin, which the father of Finrod and Galadriel, among others. But Christopher explains by reference to an earlier draft that this really only applies to the description of the Noldor, not all the Eldar.

[Alan Sisto]

And that makes sense. You'll totally understand when you listen to Christopher's argument here. Christopher's point. Now, in the earliest draft, which is labeled F, this was back when Tolkien wanted to include this as part of the prologue rather than as an appendix. Tolkien is writing specifically about the Noldor, pointing out that he sometimes left the word gnome or gnomish to describe them because the name of the Noldor signifies those who know now, after all, the Noldor were set apart because, as Tolkien puts it, their knowledge of things that are and were in this world and by their desire to know more.

[James Tauber]

So, gnomish, then he distinguishes these gnomes or noldor from the gnomes of popular fancy in a very similar way, almost identical to the way he describes Eldar as different from the fancies, either pretty or silly. Later, even though Tolkien eliminated the use of gnome or gnomish from Lord of the Rings, he still kept this passage but changed its application, applying it to elves.

[Alan Sisto]

Now, Christopher points out that he addresses this all the way back in Book of Lost Tales 1, the very first volume of History of Middle Earth, when he pointed out that this passage about eye color and hair color was written of the Noldor only. So after all, he writes in Peoples of Middle Earth, here quoting himself from Book of Lost Tales 1, I objected that the Vanyar had golden hair, and it was from Fanarfin's Vinyaran mother Indus that he and Finrod, Felegand and Galadriel, his children, had their golden hair, finding in the final use of this passage an extraordinary perversion of meaning. But my father carefully remodeled the passage in order to apply it to the Eldar as a whole. And it does indeed seem extraordinary that he should have failed to observe this point. It seems possible that when he reused the passage in this way, the conception of the golden hair of the Vanyar had not yet arisen. So he's trying to, you know, like, look, this doesn't make any sense, dad. You completely. You forgot about the. I mean, the whole point is that it's the Vinyaran blood through Indus that gives the house of Finratr of Finarfin. Finarfin the golden hair. So how in the world. But you did redo this passage. You didn't just change Noldor to elves, you changed other things. So you clearly took the time to tweak this. But it still doesn't make any sense. Unless maybe at that point you hadn't decided about the Vanyar. So maybe that's the reason. I don't know. I don't know. There's. There's no real clear cut answer here. We do know though, that obviously the Vanyar have golden hair as well.

[James Tauber]

Yep. But whatever their hair color or eye color, they had melodic voice and were valiant.

[Alan Sisto]

So clearly not related to you and me. James, speak for yourself.

[James Tauber]

We have melodic voices. Surely that could be maybe not valiant.

[Alan Sisto]

I was gonna say they and were valiant. It wasn't like. Or were valiant. You know, you must have both a melodic voice and valiance.

[James Tauber]

Well, people don't listen to the podcast to hear us be valiant.

[Alan Sisto]

Well, that's a good thing. We listen a long time.

[James Tauber]

It's the low, melodious voices.

[Alan Sisto]

That's right.

[James Tauber]

We get a reference to the mingling of the elves and men. The history of the exiles was in far off days, crossed by the fate of the fathers and a reminder that their fate is different. Their dominion has long ago passed and they are no longer present in the circles of the world again.

[Alan Sisto]

That's that sort of melancholy, that sense of fading and disappearing and in this case, disappeared. You know, they're not just fading, they are gone. They're no longer present here in the world. And that's, you know, that's a sorrowful thing, that their only presence is felt in the bloodlines of men. Those, the three unions of the Eldar and the Edain.

[James Tauber]

Yeah. Okay, let's finish up Appendix F by coming back to the word hobbit. Itself, as well as some other thoughts on Hobbit now.

[Alan Sisto]

All right, Hobbit is an invention in the Westeron. The word used when this people was referred to at all was Banakil Halfling. But at this date the folk of the Shire and of Bree used the word Kuduk, which was not found elsewhere. Meriadoc, however, actually records that the king of Rohan used the word Kudukan, whole dweller, since, as has been noted, the Hobbits had once spoken a language closely related to that of the Rohirrim, and it seems likely that Kuduk was a worn down form of Kudukan. The latter I have translated for reasons explained by Holbitla. And Hobbit provides a word that might well be a worn down form of Holbitla if that name had occurred in our own ancient language. Gamgee. According to family tradition set out in the Red Book, the surname Galbasi, or in reduced form Galpsi, came from the village of Galabas, popularly supposed to be derived from Galab game, and an old element, bass, more or less equivalent to our wick or witch. Gamwich. I pronounced it that way because that's how it's spelled. But then he puts in parentheses pronounced Gammage, so that's how we pronounce gammage. It looks like Gamwich seemed therefore a very fair rendering. However, in reducing gamma G to Gamgee to represent Galpsy, no reference was intended to the connection of Samwise with the family of Cotton, though a jest of that kind would have been Hobbit like enough, had there been any warrants in their language. And boy, will we get to that. Is that what I'm like? What? What do you mean? What connection? What? Anyway, sorry, back to the text. Cotton, in fact, Tolkien goes on, represents Hlothron, a fairly common village name in the Shire, derived from Hlof, a two roomed dwelling or hole, and Ran or Ranu, a small group of such dwellings on a hillside. As a surname, it may be an alteration of Hlathrama, Cottager Hlathram, which I have rendered Cotman, was the name of Farmer Cotton's grandfather, Brandywine. The hobbit names of this river were alterations of the elvish Branduin. And then he puts in parentheses, accented on and derived from Baran, golden brown and Duin, large river of Baranduin. Brandywine seemed a natural corruption in modern times. Actually, actually, the older hobbit name was Brandanin border water, which would have been more closely rendered by Marchbourne, but by a Jest that had become habitual, referring again to its color. At this time, the river was usually called Braldahim. Heady, Alex. It must be observed, however, that when the old bucks Zaragamba changed their name to Brandybuck Brandagamba, the first element meant Borderland, and Marchbuck would have been nearer. Only a very bold hobbit would have ventured to call the master of Buckland Braldagamba in his hearing. And we'll get to why this like, wait a minute. Such a classic Tolkien way to end the entire thing.

[James Tauber]

Oh yeah, indeed. This more to say about this?

[Alan Sisto]

Yes, there is.

[James Tauber]

I want to start by saying that we'll try to address the other hobbit names that Tolkien goes goes in depth on in F2 when we release the mega P5 for these appendix episodes.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, there are a lot more names.

[James Tauber]

By the way, in there.

[Alan Sisto]

A lot. I don't know if we can cover all of them.

[James Tauber]

We'll cover some. But first, an admission by Tolkien that the word hobbit isn't a translation by sense, it's simply an invention.

[Alan Sisto]

That's right. So the common speech word was banakil, which meant halfling, but the hobbits themselves used a word that originally was supposedly not found anywhere else, Kuduk. Well, it might not be used anywhere else in that form, but Theoden used a very similar word, Kud Dukan, carrying the meaning hole builder.

[James Tauber]

That word was translated by Tolkien very much in a translation by sense as Holbittler. Yeah, arguing that Hobbit might very well be a word that would represent a worn down form form of Hodbittler if that name had occurred in our own ancient language.

[Alan Sisto]

And once again, this is Tolkien's sort of like not retconning but going back in time, like he'd already come up with the word hobbit. Okay, but wait a second. How would that have become a word? Well, Hobbit could be a broken down version of Holbittle hole builder. And now it's. Now let's apply that to whatever we decide as the common speech version of their their name. It's fascinating. Then we get a close look at the last name of Gamgee, which was actually in common speech Galabasi, or simply Galpsy, shortened to Galpsy.

[James Tauber]

And this was a name that originated in the name of a village, Gullabus, from a hobbit word, gullible, meaning game, like deer or the like, and a suffix that's similar to wick or witch. If gullible means game talking, reasoned. Let's Just take that word and add the village suffix of which, hence gammage.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, but then to reflect the shortening of Galbasi to Galpsy, Tolkien reduced Gamma G to Gamgee, here, explaining that no reference was intended to the connection of Samwise with a family of cotton, though a jest of that kind would have been Hobbit, like enough. Now back that cotton truck up a bit. What jests? And why would Gamgee have a connection with the Cotton family? Other than after the fact, of course. I mean, what's going on here?

[James Tauber]

Well, maybe some of our UK listeners get this joke, but let's go to letter 184 to explain it for the rest of us. Tolkien is writing in March 1956 to a Mr. Sam Gamgee from London, who was, not surprisingly curious about the use of the character named Sam Gamgee. He wrote, I know it's a fiction, but it is rather a coincidence as the name is very uncommon but well known in the medical profession. Well, that just confuses us further so seriously.

[Alan Sisto]

What?

[James Tauber]

Look at Tolkien's response to help us out with this. Well known in the medical profession.

[Alan Sisto]

What now? So Tolkien explains, the reason of my use of the name is this. I lived near Birmingham as a child and we used Gamgee as a word for cotton wool. So in my story, the families of cotton and Gamgee are connected. I did not know as a child, though I know now that Gamgee was shortened from Gamgee tissue and that it was named after its inventor, a surgeon, I think, who lived between 1828 and 1886. It was probably, I think, his son, who died this year on 1st of March, aged 88. This is again in 1956, after being for many years professor of surgery at Birmingham University. Evidently Sam, or something like it, is associated with the family, though I never knew this until a few days ago when I saw Professor Gamgee's obituary, noticed and saw that he was son of Samson Gamgee, and looked in a dictionary and found that the inventor was S. Gamgee, 1828-86. And probably the same. What? You've got to be kidding me. So Hobbity, really it is.

[James Tauber]

And we'll get to an even better example, I think, with the Brandywine.

[Alan Sisto]

Oh, my goodness.

[James Tauber]

In a moment, just in terms of Hobbit jokes and puns. But this whole thing, of course, gives Tolkien excuse to explore the name Cotton, which he says represents the hobbit name Hlothran, derived from an element, hloth, meaning a two roomed dwelling or hole. So not a studio apartment, but a small place nonetheless. And Ranu, meaning a small group of these dwellings on a hillside.

[Alan Sisto]

Quick sidebar, by the way. Go back to Hamfast's hobbit name, Ranugad uses that exact same common speech element, Ranu. The name meaning stay at home.

[James Tauber]

Yep. And since there's a name, it's basically Cottager. Tolkien's given them the name Cotton.

[Alan Sisto]

And then finally we get an explanation, and it's a short explanation, really, considering how long this could have gone on, of the name of the river Brandywine. Now, I know it seems obvious on the surface, right? You've got the Elvish Branduin from Baran, golden brown. We see that, by the way, in the name of the river, but also one other place, the hill of Dol Baran, where Pippin looked in the palantium, etc. And doing large river, which we also see in the name of the Anduin.

[James Tauber]

Exactly, yeah. So the hobbits, for once, name something in connection with the elves and it gets corrupted from Baranduin to Brandywine. But wait, that's a translated word. And besides, that's far too simple for talking.

[Alan Sisto]

That's right.

[James Tauber]

Actual Hobbit name was Brandanin, which had the meaning border water. Tolkien says a more accurate translation would have been something like Marchborn, but the Hobbits had already changed Branda Nin border water to Braldehim in reference to the colour. So Brandywine isn't a modern English corruption of Baraduin, but a translation of Braldehim.

[Alan Sisto]

That's just wild. I absolutely love that. But I've got to go to F2 for this, because there's something even more entertaining here. Tolkien writes that Branduin was by the Hobbits picturesquely perverted into Branduhim, signifying in their tongue foaming beer from the elements brand or Brandu foam and Heem Hema beer. I have imitated this by calling the river the Brandywine, Similar in sound and a very possible corruption of Branduin, although the sense is not very closely similar. There is in fact no evidence for the distillation of brandy in the Shire.

[James Tauber]

No, no brandy. We really should end with that tragedy.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, that's true. That's. Well, all right. Well, on that tragic note, I do.

[James Tauber]

Want to say, though, that translating puns and wordplay is one of the most difficult things to do for a translator.

[Alan Sisto]

So many levels.

[James Tauber]

It makes me think of the amazing work that Michael Everson does, publishing translations of not only the Hobbit, but Alice in Wonderland. Right. Alice in Wonderland is full of wordplay, and yet he publishes translations of it in over 100 different languages. And each of those translators has to work out, how am I going to convey these puns and wordplay? It's an amazing task, and it's fun to see Tolkien do this too.

[Alan Sisto]

It really is.

[James Tauber]

Okay, so we're not gonna. We're not gonna end on the no.

[Alan Sisto]

Brandy on the Brandy list tragedy.

[James Tauber]

We get to close Appendix F with how this relates to the name of the old bucks who became the Brandybucks. Right. Their original Hobbit name, Zaragamba, was translated as Old Bucks. But when they moved to the Buckland, they changed their name not to Brandy Buck, obviously, as that's the translation.

[Alan Sisto]

Right.

[James Tauber]

But from Zaragamba to Branda Gamba.

[Alan Sisto]

Now, that first element, Branda, we now know, means Borderland. But even though the Branda Nin was now called the Braldehim, no one in their right mind would call the master of Buckland Bralda Gamba, which would be the equivalent of Heady Buck or foamy headed Buck. If we include that F2 explanation. And I just have to say, and I want to talk about this for a little bit, it is so Tolkien to end everything, because this is the end of the appendices with a linguistic joke that he leaves the reader to figure out on their own. He doesn't even explain that to us. Yes, it's brilliant and awful and great and just, yeah, fantastic. I love that. I don't even know if there's anything to be said about that other than that is so Tolkien. Yeah, it really is. Now we hear rumor that Barliman Butterbur and his team over at the Prancing Pony Inn have in fact learned how to distill brandy. So disaster averted. James, what does Barlaman, the Master Brandy Distiller, have for us tonight?

[James Tauber]

So we have a great question here from Anne in Toronto, who raises a question that I think is going to lead to something that's bothered me for a while in relation to all this wonder we've talked about.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, just what I want to do. Bother.

[James Tauber]

James N. Asks if Tolkien used Old English for the names of the Rohirrim to make it sound like an older form of our language. What do translations of Lord of the Rings do? In other words, if you have a Spanish translation, we talk so much in Appendix F about Tolkien wanting alien to sound alien, but familiar to sound familiar and all these analogies that he did. Right, right. Does that mean that if you're reading a Spanish translation of Lord of the Rings, that the Rohirrim speak an older form of Spanish. If you read the Chinese translation, the Rohirrim speaking an older form of Chinese. Do the men of the Dale speak a northern dialect of. And I mean, the short answer is, as far as I can tell, no, which seems like a really lost opportunity. And then you dive into. I'm going to say nomenclature. I'm sorry, I can't bring myself to say nomenclature. But Tolkien wrote a document called Nomenclature of the Lord of the Rings. It's published. It was first published in a Tolkien Compass in 1975. Christopher did some editing, and the chapters titled the Guide to the Names in the Lord of the Rings.

[Alan Sisto]

Right.

[James Tauber]

And it was something that his father had written as a guide to translators and how to deal with all of the stuff that he says. And it starts off saying. It goes through and gives a whole long list of how to deal with various names.

[Alan Sisto]

Right.

[James Tauber]

But it starts off saying all names not in the following list should be left entirely unchanged in any language used in translation. So in other words, he's going to give a list of things, but if it's not on the list, do not translate it at all. But then he says it is desirable that the translator should read appendix F or listen to this podcast episode. Please do, and follow the theory there set out.

[Alan Sisto]

What is that theory that's set out?

[James Tauber]

Well, I think it's clear from all the stuff we've discussed in this episode, this methodical.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, translation by sense.

[James Tauber]

Translation by sense. But also maintaining the. An analogical relationship between the languages so the familiar stays familiar. Things that are maybe a little distant or a little distance, and then stuff that are wholly alien remain wholly alien. But that's not what he lays out in the rest of the nomenclature. He seems to take a much more black and white approach of if it's common speech, translate it. If it's not, keep it exactly as is. Which suggests Tolkien would not have wanted the Chinese translation to change the Rohanese, but that would lead to. It's very odd in light of all the stuff we've read because. Because I'll read some examples. Because he does talk about specific words, and it'll give a flavor of sort of what Tolkien had in mind that other translators should do.

[Alan Sisto]

Right.

[James Tauber]

So the first one I'm just going to read is how he says to deal with Sackville Baggins.

[Alan Sisto]

Ah, yes, that's a great one.

[James Tauber]

So Sackville Baggins, he says Sackville is an English name of more aristocratic association than Baggins. It Is of course, joined in the story with Baggins because of the similar meaning in English equals common speech, sack and bag. And because of the slightly comic effect of this conjunction, any compound in the language of translation containing elements meaning more or less the equivalent of sack, bag, will do so in other words, in the case of Sackville Baggins, he wants you to translate that. He wants the joke to pass in. Whatever the word for sack is, whatever the word for bag is, do something with that. That kind of retains the joke. So that's a case where he does want to it. There's an interesting one in the case of Sharky. He says sharky is supposed to be a nickname modified to fit the common speech in the English text, Anglicized based on the Orcish shaku, old man. The word should therefore be kept with modification of spelling to fit the language of translation. Alteration of the diminutive and quasi affectionate ending E to fit that language would also be in place. So in other words, keep the shark.

[Alan Sisto]

Keep because it's from Orcish.

[James Tauber]

Shark, because that's orcish.

[Alan Sisto]

Right.

[James Tauber]

But whatever your language does to make things affectionate or diminutive, do that to shark. So that's a really interesting combination.

[Alan Sisto]

Interesting. That's an edge case. Yeah.

[James Tauber]

We keep the alien soundingness, but do something to it that's local to the language of translation.

[Alan Sisto]

Okay.

[James Tauber]

But then we get firion.

[Alan Sisto]

Oh, like firion wood. Okay.

[James Tauber]

I would expect, given everything that we discussed and read in Appendix F, that Tolkien would have wanted that translated to.

[Alan Sisto]

Something like an old word for mountain, because that's what that is. Right, Right.

[James Tauber]

And this is what he says. I mean, this is still helpful from a linguistic point of view. But it's odd, the instructions he gives. He says, firien, an old Rohan name representing an old word. Old English Firgen, pronounced firian for mountain. Compare Halifir, holy mount, as belonging to the language of Rohan. Firion should be retained.

[Alan Sisto]

So the language of Rohan is to.

[James Tauber]

Be retained, he says. And he continues on. I'll skip to the end. He says in a translation would be best to leave both unaltered, both Firian Feld and Firien Holt as being alien, not common speech names.

[Alan Sisto]

Okay. So we lose the ability to connect that older language to the common speech.

[James Tauber]

Which I think is seen. I would love readers who have read Lord of the Rings in other languages if they're native to that language, if there are any examples where the translator has gone ahead and tried to do this analogical representation of Rohanese in something, an older form of their language.

[Alan Sisto]

Maybe the concern is that it just couldn't be done in all languages because there isn't always an older enough or too old or it's not known or.

[James Tauber]

Tolkien didn't trust the ability of the translator to. Because, I mean, we've seen the, the amount of work that Tolkien went to to construct these analogies and everything.

[Alan Sisto]

You can't expect a translator to take a finished work and put that amount of effort into it.

[James Tauber]

That's a vast amount of work given the philological knowledge of skill.

[Alan Sisto]

That's the thing. I mean, Tolkien a genuine expert in this sort of thing.

[James Tauber]

Exactly.

[Alan Sisto]

Translators are going to be very talented, very skilled people to be able to do that, but they're not going to have that philological background.

[James Tauber]

Which makes it all the more odd that he says follow the theory there set out. He wants people to follow the theory in Appendix F. But then all his examples go against that.

[Alan Sisto]

Maybe he's literally only talking about translation by sense only and getting rid of the connection to the older link. Yeah, but that seems to break the story in a few ways.

[James Tauber]

Yeah. So I'd love to know if people have read. Coming back to Anne's question, I think it's clear what Tolkien has said he wanted in the nomenclature. But what have the translation. Has anyone actually tried it? Has anyone done it?

[Alan Sisto]

Because it does. I'm thinking now it really does break that part of the story where Mary talks about how he could catch snippets of their speech and understand it. Really? Why? Because if you're reading it like you said in Spanish, for instance. Yeah. Something really alien, like a totally different language group. Yeah. You're reading it in, let's say, Mandarin. And how in the world would Mary pick up Old English as being connected with Mandarin? That doesn't make any sense at all.

[James Tauber]

If it used classical Chinese or something like that, I think it would be really fascinating.

[Alan Sisto]

Right, right, right, right. Something dating back to, to, you know, the Han Dynasty.

[James Tauber]

Exactly. Right.

[Alan Sisto]

But yeah, that's wild.

[James Tauber]

Yes. I'd love readers who have read it, you know, who are non native English speakers who've read it in. In their. Their own first language. Be really interested to know what they've done. But it seems clear that Tolkien did not succeeded in that. It seems, contrary to his instruction to follow the theory set out in Appendix F. That that's not actually what Tolkien.

[Alan Sisto]

No, it's not. What he wants clearly is the. The nomenclature was written very much to address real world problems that were already happening.

[James Tauber]

Yes.

[Alan Sisto]

I mean, you know, in translations that had already come out, that he was like, ah, no, this is not going.

[James Tauber]

To work because this, this came out after, I believe it was the Dutch and Swedish translations had been made.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, certainly the Swedish one had been made. And I think for some reason my brain thought this was in like in leading up to the Dutch translation. Maybe you're right, it might be after.

[James Tauber]

I've got an association in my mind with it.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, I know there's a connection with it. But my thought it was he was writing it to specifically that that was the, the next translation this was to apply to. But I could be wrong on that.

[James Tauber]

Yeah, I mean the interesting thing there is if you are translating into another Germanic language and Tolkien does talk about this a little bit in, in the nomenclature, that if you're translating into another Germanic language, a lot of his tricks could just be carried across. So I would understand that if you're translating, if you're translating into Dutch, it would be entirely appropriate to retain the Rohan representation as Old English. That would almost certainly work. But to do that with something else. Maybe he didn't have that in mind. Maybe he hadn't even considered translation into Mandarin or Arabic.

[Alan Sisto]

That's true. He may not have thought of it being translated anything other than other Germanic languages or at least at the very most distant Latin based European languages.

[James Tauber]

Yeah, yeah. Would Spanish, how would Spanish be treated? How would French be treated? And so on. So if anyone knows, I'd love to know examples of how it's been treated. Brazilian Portuguese, I should check with my friends who have been involved in that, how they handled it.

[Alan Sisto]

I do wonder, and I know that there are some letters. I'm going to have to go back into the letters because I know that there are a series of letters that he wrote sort of around this, complaining about, complaining about translations but also talking about translations and how we can help the translators. These were all like in the mid-50s and things I want to say like 56, 57 were where most of them came about.

[James Tauber]

There's a funny series of letters where he says, in a more public letter he says that he's not a linguist, but then in another letter he says, I'm a professional linguist. Like he, depending on his audience, much like we talked before, Aragorn can speak differently depending on his audience. Tolkien did similarly with regard to how confident he claimed to be about his linguistic abilities.

[Alan Sisto]

Wow. Well, that was fascinating. It was a good question. And I think like you said, there's really no singular answer because it does seem to be irreconcilable in some ways, certainly when you look at some of the letters that he's written. And we may take a look at those again in the P5. But folks, for now, that wraps it up for another episode of the Prancing Pony Podcast and for our time in the appendices to the Lord of the Rings. But be sure to join us again next week as we wrap up season nine with a very special interview we know you'll enjoy.

[James Tauber]

Yes, it's going to be a really fun interview.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah.

[James Tauber]

Alan and I want to thank the members of Team PPP editor Jordan Reynnels Barleyman, Becca Davis, social media manager Casey Hilsey, Event and Patreon community coordinator Katie McKenna, graphic artist Megan Collins, and website guru Phil Dean.

[Alan Sisto]

Now, please take a minute to check out theprancingponypodcast.com that's where you'll find show notes, outtakes, Prancing Pony ponderings, as well as our online storefront where you can get PPP merch featuring all the great episode artwork that Megan's been doing for the show since the start of season seven.

[James Tauber]

You'll also want to visit our library page. The Prancing Pony Podcast is, after all, a podcast about the books. So if you're interested in a book we've mentioned on the show, you'll find a link for it in our library.

[Alan Sisto]

Library.

[James Tauber]

We do get a small amount of compensation when you make your purchase, and we thank you for that.

[Alan Sisto]

Indeed we do. We also want to thank our patrons at the Kirdan's contribution tier. I'll start with demay in Alaska, Chad in Texas, Lance in New Jersey, Joseph in Michigan, Kathy from North Carolina, Carlos in California, Brian in the uk, Jerry from Washington, Joe in Washington, Irwin from the Netherlands, Ben in Minnesota, Anthony in Texas, Zaksu in Illinois, Sarah in New Jersey, Joshua in Massachusetts, Lucy in Texas, Keith in Alabama, Erica in Texas, Vivian in California, and James in Massachusetts.

[James Tauber]

There's also Ann in Kentucky, Sean in New Jersey, Mason in California, Maureen from Massachusetts, Olivia in London, Robert in Arizona, Nick in Wisconsin, Lewis in South Carolina, Thomas in Germany, Craig in California, Bailey in Texas, Texas, Kevin in Massachusetts, Julie in Washington, Bruce in California, Joe in Maryland, Nathan in Arizona, Kevin in Pennsylvania, Tom in Pennsylvania, and Jeff in Michigan. Thank you all so very much for your support.

[Alan Sisto]

Indeed. Thank you.

[James Tauber]

Now, make sure you don't miss any episodes of the Prancing Pony Podcast. Subscribe now through Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast app.

[Alan Sisto]

And one last thing. As always, don't forget to send your thoughts, comments and most of all, your complex explanations for translating hobbit names to [e-mail] and if you want your voice.

[James Tauber]

Literally heard, well, just send us audio of your question. Visit podinbox.com prancingponypod and record your question for us. Be sure to still email the question to Barliman, though.

[Alan Sisto]

Please do. Now, even though Barliman's been a lot more reliable lately, there is still a lot of mail to sort through. We'll try to get to you just as soon as we're able. As always, though, this has been far too short a time to spend among such excellent and admirable listeners.

[James Tauber]

But until next time, may you rekindle hearts in a world that grows chill.