A Brief thought on the Naming of things

A Note from the Desks of Professor Lasso and Doctor Took

It may come to the attention of the astute reader that during the last moments of the Dunlander's mortal existence, no name is given to him. He is merely referred to as the son of Mab and the Leomhann – certainly enough to identify him, but not a name or a title for himself.

This is quite logical, for that part of the text is a direct translation of the ancient hobbit poem "The Dunlander" – author unknown, which gave the strange figure, whose death it describes in such loving terms no name whatsoever. Indeed, this is a quite a common custom in hobbit literature, both academic and otherwise. If the figure being described is not of hobbit origin, they are given no name.

For instance, the figure the human reader might know as Aragorn, would only be referred to as "The Mad One" or "The Ranger" in purely hobbit texts. Indeed, the only notable exception to this rule is the lady Mab herself, which is one of the many reasons her humanity is so hotly debated amongst hobbit scholars*. While this might work well enough in shorter tales that do not emphasise the actions of men, elves, or other non hobbit folk – it is slightly harder when telling a tale with such a scope as "The War of the Dead". Thus it was decided that while referencing the actions of such individuals, we would supply them with names.

For most this was a simple task, as much of the work had already been done by Professor Tolkien half a century before us. We simply implanted the names he created onto the characters of our ancient history. Indeed, we did this even with the hobbit actors in the tale. Which is why you will read names like Samwise, Peregrin, Meriadoc and Frodo – all fine hobbit names as things go, but all far too modern to have ever belonged to such ancient hobbits as these.

The reasons for this choice – as any hobbit reader might have guessed – is somewhat more complicated however. While it is true that these more modern names will be more recognisable to the layman, it would not have taken a great deal of our time or energy to dedicate a portion of our text to explaining the true names of the hobbits of our tale. After all, how long would it have taken for us to swap a Razanur for a Peregrin, or a Kalimac for a Meriadoc? None, my dear reader, but we dared not do it.

And why?

Politics, my dear reader, politics.

You see, while the names "Razanur" and "Kalimac" may be nothing more than historical oddities, we cannot say the same for the true names of the Ringbearers. For in hobbit lands they are sacred, especially in those cities and states in the sway of the Faith of the Four Rings**.

And as for the Silmaril himself, we dare not even speak his full name in a footnote, not in a work intended for even partial human consumption – for many of his kin are of the old families, and they have never taken well to humans knowing their business. It's nothing personal you understand, we just don't want to disappear mysteriously. When we die we'd like there to be bodies for our families to bury.

But getting back on topic…

The Dunlander presented a unique problem to us in our task. For he alone amongst the Fellowship was not mentioned even once by the good professor. As his actual name has long been lost to all but the deepest of Ganymen archives – and even there the validity of such a source is debatable – it fell to us alone to create a title and a name for him. As we are not linguists, we decided against simply creating a new name and bestowing it upon him; instead we looked into more recent history for a title to our unnameable Dunlander. We decided to look into the history of Pictland***, and the Celtic humans that once resided there, as at least culturally they are the closest we can come to the Dunlanders on this Modern Earth of ours. Which is where we finally found our name.

Calgacus.

The original, and actual, owner of this name was the leader of the Celtic people during the battle of Mons Graupius– one of the greatest battles fought against the Romans in the Country. He is a fascinating person, and if the reader is interested in learning more about him we would suggest either the work of Tacitus, or Ailish Sinclair for a more intimate look at the man behind the name****.

We thank you for your patience with this little interruption of ours. We debated whether or not to reveal these truths to you, as a human reader would naturally not notice and a hobbit reader would find them so obvious that to mention them at all would seem ridiculous. However, in the spirit of true transparency, we felt we must unburden ourselves.

We Thank You once again, and now shall return you to your regularly scheduled tale of the rise of the dead in the late Middle-Earth.

*Not helped any by the usual epithets that generally follow her name, such as "First of the Fairies", "Last of the Mages" and "Lady of the Wooden Cage". Among many other less complimentary names we shall not bother to even acknowledge in this particular work of ours.

** A hobbit religion dedicated to the worship of the four ringbearers – Maura (Frodo), Bilba (Bilbo), Trahald (Sméagol) and Ban (Sam). A particular powerful institution in the western hobbit world.

*** Formerly the country of Scotland until 1567, with the abdication of the human monarch and the subsequent mass exodus of every living human from that land.

**** We would suggest "Sisters at the Edge of the World" in particular.

A Note from the Silmaril Chick: No, my name is not Professor Lasso, nor Doctor Took – and sadly I'm not a hobbit. Nor is it, in case there was some confusion, Ailish Sinclair – though she is a friend and one of my favourite authors, second only to Tolkien himself. And her new book "Sisters at the Edge of the World" is released today, so go check it out if you've been enjoying "The War of the Dead", and or frustrated at how long it takes me to update between chapters.