We forget that all the scary things from ancient myth and legend had names in their native languages that mostly translated to "evil spirit" and "thing that kills you."
"What the hell does that word mean?" "In their language? It means 'holy shit.'" "Wait, so they worshipped it?" "What? No. Not at all. It's just the last thing anyone who encountered it ever said."
In old norway, a troll was anything magical. All mystical beings were called trolls, and sorcery in norwegian is 'trolldom'. At some point, common traits among the mystical creatures of old norwegian stories were put together and given the name troll, and that creature became popular in fantasy.
"This character is Fëanor, which means Spirit of Fire in one of the languages I invented. His name symbolizes his personality, creative spirit and destructive tendencies." "This character is Treebeard, because he is a tree with a beard."
Fëanor being “Spirit of Fire” automatically becomes hilarious when you imagine Tolkien being like “so what should I name the guy who literally died, but was so mad about it that his corpse burst into flames and burned itself to ashes when his spirit finally left? Ah yes, got it!”
That is not just an Anglo-Saxon thing to do. It is universally how people name things. Especially if you take a deep dive into etymology, you will see that most names just come down to 'description of thing'. And to be honest, how else would you name something? People don't usually make up random words to use for names, and a name that is actually descriptive of the thing it refers to is easier to remember and easier to get people to agree on.
@@jodofe4879 I didn’t say it was just an Anglo-Saxon thing, but it’s definitely not a universal thing. A lot of cultures get very flowery with their names, Nippon being “land of the rising sun”, Hong Kong “fragrant harbor”, stuff like that. As opposed to the more Germanic style: the Angles live here call it “Angleland” (England), our people live here call it the “land of the people” (Deutschland), we’ve got some new land we’ve discovered “Newfoundland”, etc.
Everything is called exactly what it is, if you know that language's history y'know. Old world was overly simplistic with their namings, as they should.
Given the Saxon naming conventions that led to names like "Staveleigh hill" which translates as hill where stakes/staves grow hill" or the "river avon" which translates as "river river", none of this is surprising.
River River is actually because when the Saxons arrived they asked the local Celts what the river was called, and they just replied “Avon” which meant river in their language. More a misunderstanding than lack of creativity
@@cthulhuman6162 Like how “Kangaroo” translates to “What did you say?” in an Australian Aboriginal language. Edit: I get it, it’s a myth. I knew that when I posted it, but I thought nobody would care since I thought the internet didn’t prioritize facts over good storytelling. Color me surprised when the entire collective internet seemingly unites to tear me a new one for spreading misinformation about the kangaroo. I would be upset, but this whole thread has honestly restored my faith in humanity. I’ll leave this up, and I ask everyone who responded to correct me leave their comments up too to stand as an example of academic integrity on the internet.
Your impression of Tolkien is so goofy but in a really heartwarming way. Like that one teacher who is chill no matter what bs is happening in the school
Supposedly he'd start the first year class by running into the room wearing a Norman helm and swinging a mace around while shouting the opening lines to Beowulf at the top of his lungs. He seems like a cool teacher, very passionate about his subject.
Most Tolkein posting is done out of a sort of reverence for the guy, even when it's pretty silly. I can't say what the actual man would think about what I've seen, but it's all mostly seemed in good fun.
As a huge fan of LotR and Tolkien himself, I laughed my a$$ off the entire time and I think the man himself would have, too. Tolkien probably wasn't a man who couldn't laugh at himself so I refuse to get super offended and butthurt on his behalf. LotR stans need to chill out. Nobody's legitimately disrespecting Tolkien. It's just funny to point out some of his more basic character names.
How could it not be done lovingly? This is pretty deep knowledge of the lore that most regular viewers of the movies wouldn't know. Obviously every one of them was written by fans who have read Tolkien many times.
Treebeard/Bárbol: Would you believe I have a brother? He likes to make creams so people can shave their beard Dwarf: That sounds dreadful! What’s his name? Bárbol: Barbasol
I understand Tolkien is a pretty smart guy, but imagining him like this brings me immense joy, because this reflects around 80% of my creative invention.
Tolkien was one of the greatest creators of all time. People sometimes forget he and his lovely wife would also host parties where alcohol was served until the morning after they began. I hope wherever he is, he looks down on the joy his works have inspired with pride.
"This is a town on a lake. I have called it...Esgaroth. Elvish for 'reed lake'." "Huh. I thought you were going to call it Lake Town" *Tolkein starts chuckling ominously*
Funny story. Where I grew up in Pennsylvania, there’s a Christmas themed village that sets up hundreds of meticulously planned and designed decorations. It’s called Christmas Village. The road you take to get there is Christmas Village Road. A road directly off Christmas Village Road that snakes behind the river running through their water decorations has a good view, a grand view, yes possibly the best view available. It’s called Grand View Road. Municipal planners weren’t fucking around that year.
unironically this is extremely realistic worldbuilding. even irl we just name everything literally what it is. most cities in their native language are just a geographical feature + port/settlement or a local tribe name + land. Heck, this is where the entire country of Portugal gets its name. As well as the countries ending with "ia" and "stan".
@@agustinvenegas5238all England was once colonized by a tribe called the Angles. Angleland. Angland. England. Although “Eng” could be be a fun name for the English in a post-apocalyptic story.
Here in Portugal we have really fun names for lands and rivers. The place I currently live in literally means "new pine forest". Some rivers have funny names, like "river man" or "river bird".
And then in a galaxy brain move no writer has topped yet, he then casually drops that EVERYONE has completely different names and he's just writing as if he's translating ancient myths and sagas to comtemporary English for us
His editor also complained that "the plural for dwarf is dwarfs". Tolkien replied (not verbatim obviously): "Yeah, okay, buddy. Good for you. I actually wrote the fucking dictionary, so shove that up your ass. It's dwarves."
It makes sense though. Words often get lost in translation a lot. I do this thing where I translate the name of my friends and me and some words can get pretty funny when given the wrong pronounce.
Tolkien was about the closest you could get for a dead language omniglot and a walking encyclopedia on eurasian myth, the man knew that mythological names were normally following a silly logic like that. Like, in his translation of Beowulf, he even notes that Beowulf's name would sorta translate to "bee's wolf" or something of the sort to an old english speaker.
“Bee-Wolf” is actually an Old English compound word meaning “Bear”. In Old English, special kinds of compound words (they have a name, but it’s alluding me) were very common and used to describe all sorts of things. Oceans were called “whale-roads”, rib cages were called “bone-case” and so on.
@@rustyjones7908 Finnish was also his favorite language, which is a bit like a guy who grew up listening to R&B deciding his favorite band is Anaal Nathrakh.
You joke, but coming up with names is hard. The fact that he came up with so many cool sounding names is a feat. Half the time I just end up digging through a book of baby names or misspelling latin words. The other is me spending hours mixing random syllables.
I’ve mostly given up for my book Mostly translations of what they are, a reference to what they do, or after some sort of individual from past mythologies The loophole is that in universe they have legitimate names but are unpronounceable to the human tongue.
@iytdominotik it’s mostly in their native language with grunts and hisses. But yes there will be those of eldritch origin too. Those are straight up gonna be unpronounceable so they’re given nicknames by those who encounter them. Like “that shadow fucker” or “creepy eye thing”
@@The_Barrothmaybe try a foreign language. Random Hungarian words and names: John Seprűs arrived at Alsótarcsa, the cslm winds from Kérges valley made this hot day in Besenyő county quite pleasant. His loyal friend Lord Kerekes was to meet him at the locsl café, they have to find the trasure of Albert Tóvári before the Őrző brothers. Their best bet was mount Garam right past the trecherous Szekerce hills.
Coming up with names is piss-easy, what are you talking about? Of you want a meaning behind one - go Google what real life names mean. What you do is literally how it's done
Even more impressive when you remember he had to do this, like, seven times for each character. “Hmm…Gandalf, Mithrandir, Olorin…still need three more names for that one.”
Don't forget that Tolkein claimed that LOTR was a translation of the Red Book of Westmarch, and, translated back into their original languages, a lot of real towns and places sound very high fantasy indeed. Aylesbury is "Dreadfort", for example, and Crawley is "the Glade of Crows".
My hometown in England is literally Crawley, apparently named from I believe a Roman name for the area where a lot of crows could be found - where crows lie or 'Crows Leigh' was the name, then made into Crawley. It was also very wooded and apparently crows like to hang out around woods so yeah. We have some interesting names, names I don't have a clue what origin is.
Thing is, the names we read in the book are not the ACTUAL names. In Tolkien's mind, what he wrote down was a translation from Westron, which was kind of a Lingua Franca of Middle-Earth. The "real" name of Frodo Baggins is Maura Labingi, for instance. And even when "translating', he didn't just come up with gibberish. Quote: "The name Maura has the element maur- (wise, experienced), which Tolkien equated to the Germanic element frod- of the same meaning". So, first he made up fictional languages, then created a complete fictional mythology and several millennia worth of history, then came up with characters and plot outline for The Lord of the Rings story set in this fictional world, then adapted what would sound like complete made up gibberish without reading through tons of appendices into something that sounds like Anglo-Saxon and Germanic mythology and language. Better yet, he encouraged translators not just to translate, but adapt his book in a way that would sound "native". For example, in certain Russian translations Frodo Baggins is translated as "Frodo Sumkin" or "Frodo Torbins", both of which is based on Russian word for a "bag". Which, in turn, makes it sound like it's the name of a villager, as opposed to something like "Aragorn", which sounds epic and big. Update: "Sumkin" is actually from a joke dub of the movie, but "Torbins" is from one of the Russian translation of the books, and I can't quite remember, but I'm sure I saw a few other version based on the same principle.
Specially considering he kinda sounds like Gandalf, which is ideal, because Ian Mckellen based his performance on the way Tolkien spoke irl, since Mckellen did get to meet Tolkien before passing away
It's all humorous and all that, but then you realize most people that have anglo-saxonic ascendancy is named after that they did to earn coin. Shoutout to all the Smiths, Thatchers, Woodman, Cobbler, etc. In fact, I find Tolkien's naming sense very in touch to what you would actually see in a natural environment. People used to name stuff after very obvious local characteristics.
@@xXREDstoneMANXx He inherited the cat from his father, the cat was already very old at that point and he felt that it would be cruel to force it to learn a new name when it likely wouldn't be living that much longer anyway
I want a Tolkien asmr now, where he just talks and reads his books, and every now and then he smokes his pipe. Honestly great job on this, your voice suits the lines very well. I can imagine his thought process actually playing out like this.
It is actually historical as it matches with his philosophy. He wrote The Hobbit/LOTR/Silmarilion with the intention of creating an ancient mythology for the English isles. He viewed fiction that it shouldn't be about drama or fantastical things, but rather to maintain the constant of moral rightness that it can be maintained and ultimately win no matter the setting it is put in.
Tolkien manages to blend "cool-sounding name that you wouldn't find anywhere in our modern world" and "name with an (at least reasonably) recognizable meaning". The names aren't out of place, but they aren't obnoxiously pretentious. And they're a pretty faithful reflection of naming conventions of most of humanity's ancient stories and myths.
"What was the name for those big stone creatures, CS Lewis?" "You mean Golems?" "No, the one that turn to stone" "Oh! Trolls" "Yes, trolls, that's it......hmmm.....Golem, eh?"
The term golem comes from a Hebrew word which literally means "shapeless mass" like a lump of clay to be molded as the golem is molded to its master's will. There's no escaping literal nomenclature it's literal all the way down.
i know that this video is a joke & all, but due to my immense respect for the late professor tolkien, i'd like to point out the following: besides all of literal english names, these all come out of the incredible language families with different sub-branches & belonging to different historical periods that he naturalistically developed from his made up root 'basic elvish' & 'basic dwarven' languages. when you read into how much skillful work he put into creating just the languages of his world using his deep knowledge of linguistics then you'll truly understand how passionate he was about his creation. it truly was his life'a work & it was a work of pure love. that's when you truly start developing the huge amount of respect tolkien will forever well earnedly deserve. thanks for listening to my tedtalk
Often a simple name with the right feel to it is all you need. The enduring legacy of LOTR is proof enough that Tolkien knew how to write a book that sticks with the reader.
Best thing is, its litelary how things worked back in the day. In slavic mythology most demons/monsters have name given after function or place where they live. Examples : Błotnik - mud-thing Bagunki - swamp-maiden's Borowy - pine-forest-men Świetle - glowing/light-thing Bieda - poverty Łapiduch - ghost/soul-catcher Paskudnik - ugly-b*tch-ass-mf Ofcourse we have also things like Snake-King, Fish-King and 2137 other monsters named "bobo".
As an Eastern Slav, can't not stop by to shitpost about folklore. We have these fine lads and lasses: Leshiy (forest spirit) - "The One Who Lives in the forest" or maybe even "The One of the forest" Vodyanoy (water spirit) - "The One of the water" Domovoy (usually friendly spirit, lives in inhabited buildings) - "The One of the home" Poludennitsa and Polunotchnitsa (spooky evil female spirits, usually met in the fields either during the hottest part of the day or in the middle of the night) - "The Female One of the noon" and "The Female One of the midnight" Liho (basically the embodiment of evil, plays a surprisingly little role in the grand scheme of things) - literally the old word for "evil".
Not obvious. The nickname is actually a positive one. It’s meant to be worm as in for wyrm as in dragon. So really it’s dragontongue. Before he defected to Saruman he was respected as a shrewd talker.
@@conbry6388no, wyrm is not a compliment in Middle Earth. It means “snake” in this context. Even if it meant dragon, the dragons were servants of Morgoth.
Imagine a story where all of the villainous cities sound similar to words for death and murder, and it turns out that all of the villains just lack imagination and are secretly in a contest to try and out-edge-cringe one another.
Honestly more realistic than fancy fantasy names. You have to remember that the local culture is going to name something that on their native tongue is descriptive of what it actually is.
While naming a bearded tree "Treebeard" sounds kinda simplistic by today. You can't deny that the names Tolkien has made stick pretty well. Mount Doom is just iconic despite being "Mountain of Doom." Plus, real life is guilty of the same thing. Rocky Mountains are just mountains that are rocky. Same applies if you translate several mythical monsters. Harpy translates to "foul creature" or "malign creature" in english. Not to mention, one of his motivations for his writings was to tell stories to his kids. Inspiration can come from literally anywhere. For a campaign-story thing, I even had a monster with a name that just meant "Mirror thing" or "Reflection" that would jump out from mirrors.
Fun fact: treebeard was named after his friend C.S. Lewis and in return he became I believe the professor or something in C.S. Lewis book pretty much his character gets shot into space
Hey, I ain't judging. I like Zelda a whole lot and Zelda was (partially) inspired by Tolkien's high-fantasy. Also I can't REALLY complain because one of my favorite landmarks of Hyrule is Death Mountain. Compared to Mount Doom, one could call that even LESS original lol
Honestly, Rowling's naming is better than most I see. At least you can tell who a character is from their name. And that doesn't stop the characters from having depth, so you can't whine that the names spoil things either. Also, Cho Chang is 100% a plausible name, regardless of how Rowling came up with it.
@@justfox3577 right, made up wasn't the right phrase. I don't know if I expect too much cultural sensitivity for the time the book was written at, but it wouldn't have been hard to apply a culturally coherent name. And not just have her be "the vaguely Asian Chang", it's just weird to me.
Balrog in old Norse stands for Crooked-Flame, while Quenyan name of these fallen "angels" is Valaraukar and could be interpreted as Oath-breaker or more correctly, Oath-Wretch(es) in Finnish. Mordor is elusive old English word for mortal sin or sin of primal evil, that coincides with Tolkien's own linguistics. Curiously, in proto-indo-european Mor can mean both darkness and as variation of Mer death. While in Cornish dor means land. So Mordor quite literally is land of darkness, land of death and land of mortal peril. Grima is old Norse word for mask that was also used as a name. Wormtongue is merely what people called him as an insult. Of course, majority of Tolkien's linguistic work is not included in Lord of the Rings books. Westron terms, language which every character uses as common speech, rarely if ever survived into finished product because Tolkien considered it too alien for his readers. In real Middle-Earth, where common speech is Westron, Hobbits are called kuduks. Meriadoc Brandybuck is Kalimac Brandagamba. Peregrin Took's actual name was Razanur Tûc. Samwais Gamgi is Ban Galpsi, short for Banazir Galbasi. We see Middle-Earth through Tolkien's translation of his own invented language, further strengthening notion that this ancient myth has been passed through generations from our own pre-history.
What I really like is that Razanur means something along the lines of "hunting bird" or "falcon", while the shortened "Raz" is a word for apple. Thus, "Peregrin" and "Pippin" in translation.
To be fair, this is the logic real people use for naming, so it does feel strangely realistic that for example, the dark and foggy forest is called the Mirkwood by the people who live nearby.
It's not too far from the truth. Alot of the names are from old folklore and legends as well as being structured in the same naming conventions as old English
How to make elves' names sound elvish? Hmmm... Oh! Elves! El-ves! If I put El or something like it on all names, it might just work! Like... El-rond. Or... Galadri-el. Yes, quiet a grand idea indeed So this is a fellow that sometimes is a bear. I could just call him bear... But there were names that just meant bear, weren't they? Like... Bjorn, i guess. Huh, that first part sounds a bit like "bear"... Yes, Beorn it is. These... dinosaur creatures they have been finding as of late are nasty-looking... "dinosaur", what a strange word... I think it meant "terrible lizard" or something like that... well, "saurus" sounds quite ominous, so it might as well be the terrible part. Goodness, imagine someone called "Sauron". Truly he would be the most terrible of evil-doers, wouldn't he? ...Actually, that's quite useful...
Tolkien studied Nordic languages. He named a character 'Gamling the Old'. 'Gamling' is literally just a slightly rude Swedish word for an old person. It's like calling the character 'Old Guy the Old'.
Checks out. Not the only time Tolkien's done that. Cirdan the Shipwright. 'Cirdan', the elvish word for Shipwright. His name is literally Shipwright, the shipwright.
@missa2855 Might be possible. Technically he had a name before Cirdan (it escapes me at the moment what it was), then he picked up the name 'Cirdan' either from his profession, or just as a nickname. Cool guy to look up in the lore, but then again who isnt.
Tolkien likes to do this. Take Artanis (Galadriel) and Arwen. Both of their names translate to “Noble woman” or “noble maiden,” or something of the like. They’re also both of nobility. The terms Lady Artanis or Lady Arwen is basically just “Lady Lady” lmao. Then we have Legolas Greenleaf… Yeah Legolas literally means green leaf it’s just his name twice. And my favorite! Peredhel. The word literally means half-Elf, but *not a single member* of that line (unless you count Lúthien who actually is half-Elf, or Ëarendil but he’s only a Peredhel by marriage) is actually half-Elf, the percentages are always off because there’s a Maia in there.
Sorry to disappoint but 99% of cool sounding meaningless names for anything irl are historically just untranslated simple meaningful descriptors. Stringing random sounds together to call things by is the unusual thing.
I know it’s a bit off topic but man there are a lot of pictures of him smoking pipe or just laughing or smiling and together with this music this makes him look like such an incredible and wholesome human ❤
Many of Tolkien's names for things are in what he called the "common speech." Of these, many are translations from the elven tongue. Mount Doom, or Orodruin (Mountain of Fiery-Red) is a perfect example of this
If you don't know the English names, some of these are riddles. I recall having read Shelob somewhere but what was the hobbit surname based on pride taken in hairy feet?
Honestly I find the whole video very cute, just an old guy with far more creativity than pretty much anyone in his time thinking up names for his world. Even though by modern standarts they appear unimaginative, it's obvious they sounded nice to him and that's what really matters.
@@Arcessitor Random, made-up words? Buddy, he literally _wrote_ the english dictionary. He made an entire world filled with thousands of years of interesting background lore, side-characters that might as well have been main-characters etc.
"old guy with far more creativity than pretty much anyone in his time" he began to work on lotr in his forties, that's not old and if you honestly think tolkien was the pinnacle of creativity in the early 20th century, that just makes me sad
I ain't going through the easiest of times in my life at the moment and this wholesome humour paired with the LotR soundtrack almost made me burst into tears...
JRR Tolkien truly followed the writer advice of "take a look around the room, picks two things at random, mash them together, and there's your character's name"
>Good heavens! I can't seem to find a fitting name for a dark and brutal fallen god >What in the world would be a suiting name for a deity even MORE brutal than the GOTH barbarian warriors of old? >... >Ooh John Tolkien, you mischievous little devil! You did it again!
“Worm” is an old Norse-Germanic nickname for a dragon. In Tolkien’s own works, dragons are smooth-talkers and have incredible powers of suggestion. The name “Wormtongue” is really a double meaning. It can be taken as an insult, or a compliment.
As a writer it makes me sad the simple times have passed... Back then you could name something which conveyed the meaning perfectly and simply and if your writing was good enough people would praise you. If Tolkien was writing today people would call him unoriginal. No, he conveys meaning with names simply, like is often done in real life.
This is nothing but a light-hearted joke. I'm not a book guy myself, but I'd rather be glad readers are critical and invested enough in a book that they can come up with memes like this.
thats the problem though, you can't have both good quality and simplicity (or that the very least its not an easy thing to get both together with one writer), things being more complicated and readers having higher standards means books may no longer be able to be written by singlular men without a corporation anymore, but it also means few books get very popular without multiple steps of oversight, checks, re writes and what have you. its a balancing act that maybe doesn't help small writers but helps out other groups in the book scene.
@@sovietunion7643 I'd say (to an extent) Tolkien was good and simple. Sure he wrote hundreds of pages of lore, but you didn't have to read all that to understand that 'Mount Doom' was a scary place to be. I'll admit if I read something today with a name like 'mount doom' I'd probably laugh at it... But that doesn't change the fact that Tolkien and many other's works are revered despite their... Well, simplicity.
Tolkien would be called unoriginal today exactly BECAUSE of how HUGE of an influence he had in literature. Dwarves, Elves, Orcs and others would not be as commonplace nowadays if it wasn't for him