Bosnia & Herzegovina

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Herzegovina-Neretva Canton
City Mostar
University of „Džemal Bijedić“ in Mostar

Term paper from General linguistics

ETYMOLOGY OF J.R.R TOLKIEN

Professor: Edina Špago-Ćumurija Student: Din Ćosić

Mostar, december 2021.

 INTRODUCTION

The main goal of this paper is to show the etymological roots of Tolkien’s languages,
which inspired the creation of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

The English philologist and author J.R.R. Tolkien created a number of constructed

languages, including languages devised for fictional settings. Inventing languages, something
that he called glossopoeia (paralleling his idea of mythopoeia or myth-making), was a lifelong
occupation for Tolkien, starting in his teens. An early project was the reconstruction of an
unrecorded early Germanic language which might have been spoken by the people
of Beowulf in the Germanic Heroic Age.

The most developed of his glossopoeic projects was his family of Elvish languages. He
first started constructing an Elvin tongue in c. 1910–1911 while he was at King Edward's
School, Birmingham. He later called it Quenya (c. 1915), and he continued actively
developing the history and grammar of his Elvish languages until his death in 1973.

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 THE ETYMOLOGIES

General overview
The Etymologies is Tolkien's etymological dictionary of the Elvish languages, written
during the 1930s. It was edited by Christopher Tolkien and published as the third part of The
Lost Road and Other Writings, the fifth volume of the History of Middle-earth.
It is a list of roots of the Proto-Elvish language, from which J. R. R. Tolkien built his
many Elvish languages, especially Quenya, Noldorin and Ilkorin. They do not form a unified
whole, but incorporate layer upon layer of changes.
The Etymologies has the form of a scholarly work listing the "bases" or "roots" of the
protolanguage of the Elves: Common Eldarin and Primitive Quendian. Under each base, the
next level of words (marked by an asterisk) are "conjectural", that is, not recorded by Elves or
Men (it is not stated who wrote The Etymologies inside Middle-earth) but presumed to have
existed in the proto-Elvish language. After these, actual words which did exist in the Elvish
languages are presented. Words from the following Elvish languages are presented: Danian,
Doriathrin (a dialect of Ilkorin), Eldarin (the proto-language of the Eldar), (Exilic) Noldorin,
Ilkorin, Lindarin (a dialect of Quenya), Old Noldorin, Primitive Quendian (the oldest proto-
language), Qenya, Telerin.

The following examples from The Etymologies demonstrate how Tolkien worked with the
"bases":
 BAD - *bad-judge. Cf. MBAD-. Not in Q [Qenya]. N [Noldorin] bauð
(bād) judgement; badhor, baðron judge.
 TIR- watch, guard. Q tirin I watch, pa.t. [past tense] tirne; N tiri or tirio, pa.t. tiriant.
Q tirion watch-tower, tower. N tirith watch, guard; cf. Minnas-tirith. PQ [Primitive
Quendian] *khalatirnō 'fish-watcher', N heledirn = kingfisher; Dalath Dirnen 'Guarded
Plain'; Palantir 'Far-seer'.

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 QUENYA

From Noldorin Quenya Quenya, ultimately derived from the Primitive Quendian root

*kwene ("person"), being the name for the language invented by J. R. R. Tolkien as the
language spoken by the Elves in his books. It is also commonly known as Elvish.
Its grammar is similar to Finnish, with some similarities to Greek and Latin. The
phonology is based on Finnish, with lesser influences from Latin, Italian and Spanish.

A  - Archaic/Ancient/Ancestral/Asterisked, used to identify the primitive forms listed. Such

forms are usually, though not always, asterisked as "unattested". Note that the
abbreviation A does not actually appear in the text in LR. Most of the "A" words must be
assumed to be actually PQ, or in some cases possibly Eld, but these abbreviations are rarely
used in the Etymologies.
Eld - Eldarin, presumably Common Eldarin, the common ancestor of all the Eldarin (as
opposed to Avarin) tongues - including the two most prominent, Quenya and Sindarin.
Ilk  - Ilkorin, the language of the Eldar that remained in Beleriand while the other went over
the sea to Aman. The Ilkorindi thus correspond to the Sindar in Tolkiens final conception, and
indeed the status of the Ilkorin language in the mature mythos is uncertain: its place may have
been usurped by another language when Tolkien turned "Noldorin" into Sindarin and
transferred this language from Aman to Middle-earth (see S below).
L - "Lindarin", read: Vanyarin. (Tolkien originally intended Lindar as a name of the First
Clan, but later it became a name of the Third Clan, the Teleri. In any case, this abbreviation
only occurs twice, under ING and ÑOL.)
Q - Quenya, "Qenya".
R  - Root meaning, a gloss applied to the primitive stem (the head of the entry) itself. Note that
the abbreviation R  does not actually appear in the text of LR.
S  - Sindarin, Grey-elven. In the text in LR, the abbreviation "N" is used instead: In the thirties
and the forties, Tolkien was still clinging to the idea that the Welsh-sounding language in his
mythology was Noldorin, the language that the Noldor developed in Valinor (while Quenya
was the tongue of the First Clan only). When he was completing LotR, Tolkien finally decided
(or realized) that this was the language of the Grey-elves in Middle-earth instead. In
accordance with this revision we use the abbreviation S instead of N, and likewise OS, Old
Sindarin, where the text has ON for "Old Noldorin".

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4
 ORKISH

Orkish was a general term for the jumble of languages used by the Orcs, composed
from corrupted borrowings from other languages of Middle-earth. The variations in Orkish
between different tribes and types of Orc were so great that it was often useless for
communication, and so a standard language was necessary. 

The Black Speech

Sauron devised the Black Speech for this purpose in Mordor, but in practice
the Common Tongue was more normally used.
Sauron picked words from many sources, even the Elvish languages: "The
word uruk that occurs in the Black Speech, devised (it is said) by Sauron to serve as a lingua
franca for his subjects, was probably borrowed by him from the Elvish tongues of earlier
times". Uruk may be similar to Quenya urco, orco or Sindarin orch, but it is identical to the
ancient Elvish form *uruk (variants *urku, *uruku, whence Q urco, and *urkô, whence
perhaps S orch).
To the first Elves, Morgoth and his servants would be *urukî or "horrors", for the original
meaning of the word was that vague and general, and Sauron may have delighted in telling the
captured Elves that they were to become *urukî themselves.
But there were also other sources for Black Speech vocabulary. The word for "ring" was nazg,
very similar to the final element in the Valarin word mâchananaškâd "the Doom-ring", (there
somewhat differently spelt). Being a Maia (angel-like being), Sauron would know Valarin; it
could indeed be his "mothertongue", to use the only term available. This suggests that the
tongue of the Gods had been an ingredient in Sauron's Black Speech, "full of harsh and
hideous sounds and vile words". According to Pengolodh, "the effect of Valarin upon Elvish
ears was not pleasing" Morgoth, technically being a Vala (god-like being), must have known
Valarin (or at least picked it up during the ages he was captive in Valinor). He taught it to his
slaves in a "perverted" form. That means that Valarin naškâd "ring" may have
produced nazg in one Orkish dialect of the Second Age, from which Sauron took it.

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The One Ring inscription

 Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul,

ash nazg thrakatulûk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,

One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.

Parallels to natural languages

The Russian historian Alexandre Nemirovski claimed a strong similarity to the extinct Hurrian
language of northern Mesopotamia, which had recently been partially deciphered at the time
of the writing of The Lord of the Rings, E. A. Speiser’s Introduction to Hurrian appearing in
1941. Fauskanger corresponded with Nemirovski, and notes that Nemirovski argued that
Tolkien designed “Black Speech" after some acquaintance with Hurrian-Urartian language(s)."

Black
English Hurrian Meaning (possible interpretation?)
Speech

something predestined to occur (an evil

durb- to rule turob-
destiny?)

-ûk completely -ok- "fully, really"

gimb- to find -ki(b) to take, to gather

wur-,
burz- dark to see, to be blind (in the dark?)
wurikk-

krimp- to tie ker-imbu- to make longer fully (if of a rope, to tie

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 tightly?)

CONCLUSION

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J.R.R Tolkien used his love for languages as a gateway to creating his own. He was inspired
by many different languages and used them as etymological roots. That being said he
developed his own lore and history of how the words developed and changed over the Ages of
Middle Earth. Mentioned languages such as Elvish and Orkish are just two among many
others, all of which are interconnected and share the same root.

LITERATURE

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1. J.R.R Tolkien, The Etymologies, 1930
2. J.R.R Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again, 1937
3. J.R.R Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring, 1954
4. J.R.R Tolkien, The Two Towers, 1954
5. J.R.R Tolkien, The Return of the King, 1955
6. J.R.R Tolkien, The Silmarillion, 1977
7. Ephraim Avigdor Speiser, Introduction to Hurrian, 1941
8. David Salo, A Gateway to Sindarin: A Grammar of an Elvish Language, 2004