Language Choices and Real Names

I was reminded today of a very interesting fact about Tolkien’s world that I’d somehow managed to forget recently, but that I feel everyone should know! If you are interested in reading a bit more about this, the appendices in the back of The Return of the King (or the back of a combined LOTR book) have much more information than I’ll be able to explain here.

You might all know how The Hobbit is meant, in universe, to be the Red Book of Westmarch/the Thain’s Book/There and Back Again, Bilbo’s original tale, expanded to include the LOTR events, transcribed and eventually translated for our [English] reading pleasure. So, in other words, these books are originally (in universe) written in Westron, and then translated for English. I assume you all know that there are a few Elvish languages that Tolkien created and used in universe, as well as parts of Black Speech and Khuzdul (Dwarvish). 

I’d always assumed that Westron was just English (with a few more words added in), but Westron (or Adûni, with Westron being the English translation) is actually its own language, although not as fully created as Quenyan or Sindarin.

HOWEVER! Tolkien’s language creation goes even further than that. What you may NOT know is that Frodo, Sam, Pippin, and Merry are NOT the hobbits true names in universe! The hobbits real names are:

Maura Labingi (Frodo Baggins)

Banazîr/Ban Galbasi (Samwise/Sam Gamgee)

Razanur/Razar Tûc/Tûk (Peregrin/Pippin Took)

Kalimac/Kali Brandagamba (Meriadoc/Merry Brandybuck)

Even Bilbo is not the old hobbit’s “original” name in Adûni – he is actually called Bilba Labingi!

Tolkien goes as far as to explain the meanings of the names in Adûni, then how that translates to Old English and then modern English. Maur- in archaic Rohirrric meant “Wise”, so it translates to English through a Germanic name meaning the same, hence Frodo.

Ban (Sam) is often short in Adûni for Bannâtha, like Sam is usually short for Samuel, but in Sam Gamgee’s case, Ban is short for Banazîr, meaning “half-wise” or “simple”.

Kali means “merry, jolly, gay” in Adûni, while “Kalimac” is unknown in meaning (another choice by Tolkien, as Adûni is not a real language – wonder why he decided to give translations or meanings to some words but not to others? Could just be to make the languages seem more realistic – we have these types of scenarios with names today as well!), so Tolkien used Merry, making it short for Meriadoc.

And even the word Hobbit is an English-translated version of the Third Age word “KUDUK” – translated to Old English “HOLBYTLA”, meaning “hole-dweller” then into modern English as “Hobbit” – although kuduk is only used by hobbits – others would refer to hobbits as “BANAKIL” or “halfling”.

There are so many more interesting things relating to Tolkien’s use of our-world languages current and historical and creation of language current and historical for Middle Earth – and everything he chose for those languages was specifically a CHOICE as we keep talking about. This is not a real situation, but it definitely feels a bit more real, a bit more like a book translated from another world, when you realize that we’ve been following these hobbits through their entire journey as “Bilbo, Frodo, Sam, Pippin, and Merry” and those aren’t even, in-universe, their real names!

Again, if you want to know more, I got most of this information from the Appendices in the back of the Return of the King, and some from https://folk.uib.no/hnohf/westron.htm

Happy Readings!