Real Language

[Fenrir]

What real life language are names of people and places from Lord of the Rings based on?
I know that most of the names were based on languages invented by Tolkien so right now I'm stuck (I'm doing a Tolkien quiz).

[Quelledeloth]

the elven language was based on finnish

[Turambar]

I believe that several of the names (Gandalf, and many of the dwarves'names) were taken from the Elder Edda, which was written in an ancient Icelandic language. A couple names were taked from Beowulf, which was written in Old English. Sharkú sems very expert in this area, maybe he will weigh in here.

[TolkienGurl]

Tolkien knew about 19 languages, so he probably drew a little out of each and created his own languages.