"How does one pronounce Tolkien?"

[davem]

Originally Posted by Nessa Telrunya

. I suppose one way of saying someone's names can hold a sort of ring in one's mind.
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It holds all the mystery of new things in a new world - we discovered the names (& more importantly the sound of the names) as we discovered the world. For example, the Dark Lord of Middle-earth I first knew, & feared, & fled from, & finally confronted, along with the people of the story was Soron, not "Sowron". In the same way as we form an image of the characters & places when we first read the story, so we also learn their names, & the sound of their names, & the power of that first impression remains on some level - I'd even go so far as to suggest that changing the sound of the name alters & even lessens the magic we first experienced.