Pengolodh - is it his name? - The Barrow-Downs Discussion Forum

Aiwendil · 03-06-2009, 08:17 PM

Nice to see you venturing into this forum, mark12_30!

You raise a point worthy, perhaps, of some note. One somewhat odd consequence of our principles is that a sizeable number of familiar names are in our version replaced by names that appear only once, and often in brief, hasty notes, in Tolkien's writings. 'Avranc' becomes 'Daruin', for example, and even 'Gelion' is in our version 'Duin Daer'.

The fundamental reason for this is that name changes are by their nature easy to implement. Whereas similar late notes that propose plot changes are often 'proposed changes that do not clearly indicate the exact details that must be changed and how they are to be changed' and thus, according to our principles, not taken up, name changes are almost always quite straightforward and therefore almost always allowed.

I'm not suggesting that anything should (or can) be done about this. In theory, we could add to our principles a stipulation that long-standing names are not to be changed on the basis of a single isolated note, but that would be quite arbitrary and would leave a large number of ambiguous cases (not to mention that allowing alterations to the principles would really be opening Pandora's box). Like it or not, I think we must use 'Duin Daer' and 'Thingodhel'. But this is perhaps one unfortunate feature of our version of the Silmarillion.

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03-06-2009, 08:17 PM	#12
Aiwendil Late Istar Join Date: Mar 2001 Posts: 2,224	Nice to see you venturing into this forum, mark12_30! You raise a point worthy, perhaps, of some note. One somewhat odd consequence of our principles is that a sizeable number of familiar names are in our version replaced by names that appear only once, and often in brief, hasty notes, in Tolkien's writings. 'Avranc' becomes 'Daruin', for example, and even 'Gelion' is in our version 'Duin Daer'. The fundamental reason for this is that name changes are by their nature easy to implement. Whereas similar late notes that propose plot changes are often 'proposed changes that do not clearly indicate the exact details that must be changed and how they are to be changed' and thus, according to our principles, not taken up, name changes are almost always quite straightforward and therefore almost always allowed. I'm not suggesting that anything should (or can) be done about this. In theory, we could add to our principles a stipulation that long-standing names are not to be changed on the basis of a single isolated note, but that would be quite arbitrary and would leave a large number of ambiguous cases (not to mention that allowing alterations to the principles would really be opening Pandora's box). Like it or not, I think we must use 'Duin Daer' and 'Thingodhel'. But this is perhaps one unfortunate feature of our version of the Silmarillion.