"Hildur K." <nomail@nomail> wrote:



> sleep. Something very wrong with my brain I guess.

That's okay. We all have some things we seem to be expected to like, but for
some obscure reason don't.


> Hildur
>
> (not Isildur, wonder where he got that one from... because if I pretend this
> name to be in a nordic language, it would mean Icefire, maybe he knew what he
> was doing or maybe he was just trying to invent weird sounding names?)

Him having been a linguistics professor, for ancient Germanic languages he
probably did know quite well what he was doing ;)

And no, he didn't intend to invent weird sounding names - he intended to invent
whole weird sounding languages :) - and he did; not just words, but complete
grammar and all; and not just one, but a multitude of them.

Old Norse seems to have been an occasional source for Tolkien, but his favorites
are said to have been Finnish or Welsh. Old English, his area of professional
expertise, would be a good bet as well. But expect the origins of his words not
to be all too obvious - he really did a good job. Some say that he did the whole
Middle-Earth thing just as a tool to develop his languages.

BTW, "Isildur" is said to mean "devoted to the moon" in the fictional Numenoran
language.

Post a reply to this message