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Originally Posted by TheGreatElvenWarrior
What about a name for a cat?
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How about
Beruthiel? Too bad that no names of Queen Beruthiel's cats are known!
Or
Tevildo, as Thinlómien suggested... ( The prototype of Sauron was Tevildo, Prince of Cats, in the earliest version of the story of Beren and Lúthien in The Book of Lost Tales.)
It seems that Tolkien was less than fond of cats...
Apparently in 1959 a cat breeder had asked if she could register a litter of Siamese kittens under names taken from the LotR. Tolkien's comment was:
Quote:
letter 219
I fear that to me Siamese cats beong to the fauna of Mordor
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In a postscript to letter 309, however, he wrote a little verse that suggests that the Tolkiens did have a cat at that time:
Quote:
J.R.R.Tolkien
had a cat called Grimalkin:
once a familiar of Herr Grimm,
now he spoke the law to him.
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(Grimalkin was the name of the witches' cat in Macbeth)
In another letter (#342 and #345) he wrote an answer to a cattle breeder who asked if she could use "Rivendell" as a herd prefix and use LotR names for bulls and cows:
Quote:
letter #342
I should be interested to hear what names you eventually choose (as individual names?) for your bulls; and interested to choose or invent suitable names myself if you wish. The elvish word for 'bull' doesn't appear in any published work; it was MUNDO.
letter#345
Personally I am rather against giving strictly human and noble names to animals; and in any case Elrond and Glorfindel seem unsuitable characters, for their names which meant (1) 'The vault of stars' and (2) 'Golden hair' seem inapt. I recently played with the notion of using the word for bull I gave you, which introduced in the form -mund gives a fairly familiar sound (as in Edmund, Sigismund, etc.), and adding a few Elvish prefixes, producing names like Aramund ('Kingly bull'), Tarmund ('Noble bull'), Rasmund ('Homed bull'), Turcomund ('Chief of bulls'), etc. I wonder what you think of these?
Arwen was not an elf, but one of the half-elven who abandoned her elvish rights. Galadriel ('Glittering garland') is the chief elvish woman mentioned in The Lord of the Rings; her daughter was Celebrían ('Silver queen'). There was also Nimrodel. But I shouldn't really like these names to be given to heifers or cows. If you care for the Aramund type, I could invent a few female names. But though it is made on classical models rather than elvish, wouldn't the name of Farmer Giles' favourite cow – Galathea (in Farmer Giles of Ham) – be useful? which as it stands might be interpreted 'Goddess of milk'.
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Really very nice and helpful, wasn't he!