Lord of the Rings Fanatics Plaza

Any researcher of Tolkien should know that he drew a lot of linguistic inspiration from societies in northern Europe. Celtic, Finnish, etc. But the funny thing about language is that there are interesting coincidences that are unintended. Let this be the thread where we can point those out.

I'll start with one from my own research.

Imin: The first elf to ever awaken. From his blood came the Vanyar. Tolkien Gateway says that "Imin" means "First."

If you pronounce it as "I'm in," or "I'm mean," it would be a good way to remember his uhhh arrogance that he developed from being the first, costing him a lot more initial elves due to his decision-making.

However, if you pronounce it as "Yeemeen," then you just said something in Mandarin Chinese (well technically the other two ways to pronounce it can form a Chinese phrase as well)! "Yi" can mean first (一). "Min" can mean keen/agile (敏). Also note that the left part of "Min" means "sea." So First of the Keen/Agile seems a very fitting name for the first of all elves.

Feel free to contribute your own linguistic coincidental findings.

That's fascinating! I recently (as the result of a mix-up in a book request from the library) read Mark Hooker's Tolkien and Sanskrit, a book that, to be totally honest, I'm not totally convinced by — but which is full of references to this kind of linguistic overlap. I'll have to see if I can post some good ones before the book is due.

@Androthelm I'm guessing there weren't any good ones? :P

So here's something I just thought up of while I was driving today.

Eru is someone I think a lot of people are familiar with. The creator of everything. More importantly, humans and elves are known as the Children of Illuvatar. Children of Eru, in other words.

Guess what the popular Chinese philosophy whose foundation is based on modeling off of family dynamics is called?

Ruism. Also known as Confucianism in the West, but everyone calls it Ruism in China (Rújiā, 儒家). More specifically, this philosophy is based on showing how the ordinary activities of humans, exemplified in social relationships and family, are sacred as they are a manifestation of humanity's moral nature which is anchored in heaven. The Ru is composed of ethical concepts such as Ren, Yi, Li, and Zhi. Ren is the essence of humanity shown through compassion. Yi is righteousness and the belief of doing good. Li are norms and propriety. Zhi is being able to see right and wrong.

In other words, Ruism is about becoming a better person through self-cultivation, discovery, and seeing the world.

In the Tale of Adanel, the Fall of Man occurred because humanity failed to realize that Eru wanted them to discover and learn things by themselves instead of relying just on him because it would be better for humanity's development. They ended up being deceived by Melkor (or Sauron) and thus their stay in Middle-Earth is shortened (shortened lifespan). Much of humanity failed their original mission of self-cultivation, discovery, and independently seeing the world. They wanted their hands held the whole time by someone like Eru or Melkor.

So yeah, Eru. Ruism. The connection here was soooo obvious, and yet I couldn't connect the two until today!

@Rivvy Elf truth is I realized I had already turned it back in, so we're going totally off memory, but Hooker's main concern was about glossing connections between the rivers of Ossiriand and the rivers which appear prominently in the Rigveda. Interesting stuff -- but, like I said, not totally convincing.

Loving the Eru / Ruism connection you're pointing out.

I’ve always liked the linguistic connection between Sauron and -saur, from the Greek σαῦρος, meaning Lizard. You might say Sauron is a bit cold-blooded and reptilian. There’s also the sort of homophonic link to sauer from German and Sour from English, and you can imagine his temperament being a bit sour as well, especially after losing all His prised jewellery

Carrying on from Sauron and going back to Chinese it sounds a bit like 燒 人, or “burned person”, which is also a neat little link, I think, given all the associations with flame and the Eye wreathed in fire.

Here is one for you.

Morwen, is in lotr lore the name of the mother of Turin. And in Welsh, which we know Tolkien used often in his language resourcing, apparently means 'maiden'. Tolkien gave the name a Middle Earth meaning of 'dark maiden'.

But in Cornish, a related Celtic tongue, Morwen is more commonly altered into the name Morwenna, which has a similarly slightly altered meaning. 'Sea maiden'.

There is a place in Cornwall called Morwenstow, known as Morwenna's place. For the Saint Morwenna. And as we know, Middle Earth has Tol Morwen. An island in the mighty sea where stands in lotr lore the lasting memorial for both Morwen and her son.

Ercassie wrote: ↑Wed Mar 15, 2023 7:42 am And in Welsh, which we know Tolkien used often in his language resourcing, apparently means 'maiden'.

The Welsh and Cornish are more closely related than that even: môr in Welsh is ʻseaʻ, and -wen is a feminine suffix I believe mor is ʻseaʻ in Cornish, but donʻt quote me on that for sure!

Moriel wrote: ↑Wed Mar 15, 2023 11:14 pm and -wen is a feminine suffix

In both Elvish and Welsh it would seem.

And yes, 'mor' is all things 'sea' in cornish. And yet, the treacherous villain of Camlann was 'Mor'dred. And is 'Mor'/t not Latin for death ?

In which case Mordor and Morgoth from Tolkien's root of 'Mor' as 'dark" could relate more (pun - sorry) to the 'death' connotation, than the Celtic 'sea' etymology. Even though the sea can of course be both dark and a cause of death as well.

Mor-gan = sea-born, I believe?

This one I don't believe is coincidence, though I've never convinced anyone.

Psalm 139: 16: גָּלְמִי, רָאוּ עֵינֶיךָ

KJV gives: Thou hast seen my unformed substance; the Hebrew is something like: 'my Golem, you have seen in your eyes.' There seems to be some notion of a fetus, of a human without name or breath. The old Jewish traditions read this verse in relation to Genesis 2: 7: "And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." Our Golem is who we are before the divine breath, our first birthday present. Much later these thoughts gave rise to the traditions of the rabbis who made Golems by inscribing the name of God on a figure of earth, which then became a sort of Hulk who saved the Jews from some pogrom.

I'm sure in my bones that Gollum began as a sort of inversion of the Hebrew Golem, a person at the other end of life, still with breath but alone in a dark cave, forgetting his name and losing his birthday present.

@Chrysophylax Dives consider yourself successful in convincing someone — I always thought the phonetic Golem / Gollum similarity was a little unusual, and this seems like it could be one of the threads of it.

The phonetic similarities between Gollum and Golem had not occurred to me before. Interestingly in later iterations a golem becomes known as a creature of clay, animated by magic: and in a sense Gollum is this too; he should long have returned to dust, but the magic of the Ring continues his life.

What a fun topic! After some time thinking, here an unexpected similaritiy from my side:

Legolas -> the "las" part is what caught my attention. Of course it leads back to the word lasse (leaf), however in German the word "Lasse!" is a word that is used as "Leaving something be", i.e "Ich lasse das sein." - "I'm leaving it be." or, "Lass das!" - "Leave it!"- Leave and leaf sound pretty similar to me :D

Edit: In french it would be "laissez faire".