Didn’t at some point he say “some call me Treebeard”?
Tolkien studied languages, so he would’ve understood and probably appreciated how often things are named purely based on what they do or their immediate aesthetic values. Language is all about communication after all. Sometimes that necessitates complexity, but it should always be as simple as possible without sacrificing nuance.
A waterfall is a rare and majestic natural phenomenon that creates an tremendous yet calming noise while also conjuring up feelings of mystery and thrill. Our legends abound with hidden passages concealed within, and the mist they create often catches the sun and casts a rainbow. Waterfalls truly encapsulate the magic of life on earth…
We call them that because the water… falls…
Naming things is hard, but when you’re giving a name to a thing that is elemental, powerful, and all-important, a very simple name is not a bad idea.
This reminds me of how absurd the naming of walkie-talkie is. You can talkie while you walkie.
As a non native English speaker it took me way too long to actually understand / question the name itself as we use it in German too and I therefore learned the word before I could speak English.
English is a deeply flawed but intensely playful language. It’s like the weird kid at the playground who’s clearly a mess, but they’re always down for whatever.
I took a year in German. It’s much prettier than its reputation in pop culture makes it. One of my favourite words is sehnsucht, and I keep trying to get anglophones to steal it.
In fairness, Mount Doom has multiple different names. Source: Finished the Silmarillion for the first time last night. :)
Orodruin, Amon Amarth, Mount Doom.
Oh, just the usual kind. :)
NGL, it’s a tough read, but I figured out why…
There’s really no dialog. There are characters doing things, but it’s all distanced, like seeing things happening from 10,000 feet up instead of being in the same room.
I haven’t tried since I was in my late teens. I read a lot but that one got me. I’m 50 now and still haven’t picked it up again. Good on you.
I used to parrot the “created multiple languages, named the place Mount Doom” meme up until I started getting deeper into Tolkien lore. Now I’m the obnoxious one that points out all the other names for Mount Doom, as well as translating other “cooler” names to show that they’re all similarly named (my favorite being Khazad Dum, or “Dwarf Hall”, followed by Cirith Ungol, or “Spider Cleft”).
This is also fairly common in real life, for example, this map of Japan with the Prefectures translated to English.
I think this is the same in pretty much every country (well, once you add in people’s names, like Jacksonville or Virginia), but it’s a little more difficult to find because you have to use an etymology dictionary instead of just looking up the meaning of Chinese characters in a regular dictionary of that language because they’re are still in current use.
For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_Kingdom_county_name_etymologies?wprov=sfla1
Yeah, it’s like The Grand Canyon has a bunch of other names, but the one we stuck with is just: “The grand canyon. You know which one I’m talking about.” Sometimes the boring but obvious name works. It’s more believable that the people in this world renamed stuff to something obvious.
Mount Doom is also where the band Amon Amarth got their name from which is funny because they don’t have any songs with Tolkienian fantasy and they’re not really even huge Tolkien fans. It just sounded cool
I was gonna make a snarky comment about how Treebeard has a cool Elvish name, then I looked it up and “Fangorn” literally means “Treebeard” in Sindarin 🤷♂️
Yeah but his original name really is unpronouceable because it would take literal days to spell out, if I remember correctly. So it’s not completely unrealistic for others to want a shorter version. Like when Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu gets shortened to Taumata Hill in english.
