Linguistic puns, riddles, and jokes in LotR, etc.

[Alfirin]

Originally Posted by Morthoron

The use of pompous names are a hallmark of some families of Hobbits (particularly the upper class Tooks and Brandybucks). Some are of Welsh origin: Madoc, Caradoc, Gordobac etc. Some are Frankish: Isengrim, Pippin, Odo, Otho, Paladin, Hildibrand, etc. Some are even Latinate or Continental European: Gerontius, Donnamira, Mirabella, Ferdinand, Belladonna, Sigismond and Fortinbras (also the Prince of Norway in Shakespeare's Hamlet).



Actually, in Sindarin it is Baranduin, "golden-brown river", which is the color of brandy (in fact, brandy was usually referred to as brandy-wine in medieval texts). 'Heady Ale' is not pale but more brown in color (but not as dark as stout)...it's all in the color and not the specific alcoholic drink I guess.

Pompus names remind me what about "Sackville-Baggins". Isn't there a real Engish surname "Sackville-bagg" (or "Bagge"?

On the River, I wasnt questioning the color I was just questioning whether, at the technological level most of ME was at in the Third age, anyone knew what distillation was, given that none of the beverages people are noted as drinking are distilled (no whisky, no eu-de-vie, and most important, no brandy) and whether, if distillation was unknown, naming a river the "Brandywine" might be an bit of an anachronism, since it would be naming it for it resembence to a beverage no one in ME had ever seen.)

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by Alfirin

On the River, I wasnt questioning the color I was just questioning whether, at the technological level most of ME was at in the Third age, anyone knew what distillation was, given that none of the beverages people are noted as drinking are distilled (no whisky, no eu-de-vie, and most important, no brandy) and whether, if distillation was unknown, naming a river the "Brandywine" might be an bit of an anachronism, since it would be naming it for it resembence to a beverage no one in ME had ever seen.)

Well, the Elvish Miruvor is described as a 'cordial' I believe, which indicates it is a liquor or liquer and therefore distilled. But considering were are talking of Hobbits, it may well be anachronistic, unless of course there was a Benedictine monastery nearby Hobbiton.

[Rumil]

Hi all,

Peregrin as mentioned, was a wanderer or outsider to the Romans but said to be the basis of 'pilgrim',

see the Wiki article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peregrinus_(Roman),

Cheers,

Rumil

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

Originally Posted by Alfirin

Pompus names remind me what about "Sackville-Baggins". Isn't there a real Engish surname "Sackville-bagg" (or "Bagge")?

I've never seen that particular surname, but both Sackville and Bagge turn up in The Oxford Names Companion and a compound of the two names isn't unlikely. These days it's becoming more common for married couples to combine their surnames and adopt the new compound, but in Tolkien's day this was mostly done if the bride's maiden name was more prestigious than her husband's surname, so as to emphasise the family's social connections. The Bagginses are a family of high social standing, so it would make sense for the Sackvilles to have engaged in a spot of onomastic one-upmanship. In England, this sort of thing is considered the hallmark of a socially aspirant middle class, so a double-barrelled surname carries distinct overtones of bourgeois pretension (one seldom encounters such surnames among the higher aristocracy and never among the working class). More damning yet from a Tolkienian perspective is that Sackville is a Norman habitation name (from Saquenville in Eure) and the Normans were the annoying social climbers par excellence: the great-grandsons of Vikings, sporting recent French names and styles for their borrowed cachet and speaking a debased form of French.

Tolkien's antagonism towards the Normans in particular and the French language in general is well documented. In 1910 he addressed the King Edward's School debating society in support of the motion 'This house deplores the occurrence of the Norman conquest'; and according to one of his former students, he once commented in a lecture to cadets: "You see... English was a language that could move easily in abstract ideas when French was still a vulgar Norman patois". I can only imagine that he was speaking of Norman French, which was the English court language from 1066 until Edward III began using English in his official documents more than two centuries later.

Regarding Hobbit names, they seem to have been given, as names are in England today, with no regard for their meaning. Clearly Tolkien enjoyed a joke at the expense of his characters in giving them names with appropriate meanings of which their owners were unaware. Apart from Peregrine, an obvious example would be Frodo, which is related to a Norse word meaning 'wise' and the personal name Froði (ð is always anglicised as d).

The anachronism of Brandywine can be explained by Tolkien's translator conceit. His special note on this name at the end of Appendix F to LR suggests that Brandywine is his own attempt to translate a pun in Westron in terms that would be understood by his English-speaking contemporaries. This doesn't cause the same problems for me as his simile in A Long-Expected Party: "The dragon passed like an express train...", since I don't think that anything in the pre-industrial world is comparable to a steam-powered express. Perhaps in Middle-earth itself the only thing like a dragon passing low overhead is the thing itself.

[EDIT] The names of Gerontius Took's "three remarkable daughters" are all Italian. As mentioned earlier, Belladonna means "beautiful woman", Donnamira means "Remarkable woman" and Mirabella means "Remarkably beautiful". It's interesting that Bilbo's mother is the only one of the three sisters not to have a "remarkable" name.

[Alfirin]

NOW I remember where I heard the name Sackville-Bagg, it, was when I was a kid. When I was a (very young) child I read a group of books about a boy whome made friends with a family of vampires (I look it up it was the My friend, the Vampire series by Angela Sommer-Brondberg) Sackville-Bagg was the Vampire family's surname. It's just one of those hypenated names that always seems to pop up like Neville-Smythe or Donnel-Smith

on distillation another thought occurs. In our world, while distillation was largely unkown in Europe in the Middle Ages, I was well known in the Arab world, hence the world alcohol (it derives from the same word as "khol" (the eye makeup) since that was the first thing made using a refining process simar to distallation and al-khol came into parlance as a word to describe sothing that had been refined to its purest form (hence al-khol of wine). So in ME, maybe distillation is known by the men of Near Harad.

I'm sure someone said this earlier but given who her husband is theres a chuckle in the fact that (for most people) the first thing they think of when the hear the name "belladonna" is the plant (deadly nightshade) not the words "beautiful woman" (though as you point out that is the literal transation. Also isn't mirabella a kind of plum (or is that mirabelle) wonder what color her compexion was? come to think of it when I head the word "bradywine" my first thought is of a large pink fleshed type of tomato.

[Estelyn Telcontar]

Originally Posted by The Squatter of Amon Rûdh

The names of Gerontius Took's "three remarkable daughters" are all Italian. As mentioned earlier, Belladonna means "beautiful woman", Donnamira means "Remarkable woman" and Mirabella means "Remarkably beautiful". It's interesting that Bilbo's mother is the only one of the three sisters not to have a "remarkable" name.

I find it interesting that the three Took sisters have three names compounded of only three different parts: Bella, Donna, and Mira. Each sister shares a part of her name with each of the others; only the compound is unique. I'm not sure how that fact is significant, but it fascinates me. Apparently they were all remarkably beautiful females!

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

Originally Posted by Estelyn Telcontar

I find it interesting that the three Took sisters have three names compounded of only three different parts: Bella, Donna, and Mira. Each sister shares a part of her name with each of the others; only the compound is unique. I'm not sure how that fact is significant, but it fascinates me. Apparently they were all remarkably beautiful females!

Since we know practically nothing about the characters, I don't think we'll ever know if and how that's significant. I suspect that the similarity of the names was deliberate, and that they were chosen for their pleasant effect when spoken - meaning being a minor consideration in Hobbit naming convention. Tolkien may have borrowed an idea from Anglo-Saxon naming convention, in which names were chosen in part because they alliterated with other names borne by members of the same family (usually fathers, grandfathers, etc.), making them easy to fit into poems recording important peoples' ancestors and easy to remember when the poems were recited. Although these names don't alliterate in the modern sense, they are memorable because of their shared components.

Belladonna and Mirabella are both botanical names, the former for Deadly Nightshade as Guinevere pointed out, the latter for the Mirabelle plum (Tolkien preferred Italian to French, so it's not surprising that he'd use an Italian form). Donnamira is the odd one out, since it doesn't refer to any common plant species.

I must admit to a mistake above: mira tends to mean 'wondrous' or 'marvellous' more than 'remarkable' (Lat. mira, mirus). Although that might mean that the sisters were all beautiful, knowing Tolkien's sense of humour they could just as easily have been extremely plain.

[Ibrîniðilpathânezel]

In botanical taxonomy, Mirabella is also associated with a cactus and a member of the four o'clock family. So perhaps one might look at these names as meaning Belladonna had a rather poisonous personality, and Mirabella was either prickly or lazy, inclined to bestir herself only rather late in the day. As Tolkien says that Hobbits were fond of flower names for girls, I wouldn't be at all surprised if he occasionally had such things in mind.

[Beoben]

Hi. Do you have the full text of "'This house deplores the occurrence of the Norman Conquest..." I read it in a Tolkien biography years ago and now need it for a paper I'm writing. Your help would be much appreciated. Thanks!