Guide to the Names in The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R.Tolkien

Author:J.R.R.Tolkien [J.R.R.Tolkien]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-03-05T06:00:00+00:00

Derndingle. Said by Treebeard to be what Men called the meeting-place of the Ents (II 82); therefore meant to be in the Common Speech. But the Common Speech name must be supposed to have been given a long time ago, when in Gondor more was known or remembered about the Ents.

Dingle is still known, meaning ‘deep (tree-shadowed) dell’, but dern ‘secret, hidden’ is long obsolete, as are the related words in other Germanic languages — except Tarn- in German Tarnkappe (from Middle High German). Translate by sense, preferably by obsolete, poetic, or dialectal elements.

Dimholt. The wood of dark trees at the entrance to the Dark Door . The name is given in the form of the language of Rohan, and so should be retained unchanged, though dim is still current in English (but here used in an older sense, ‘obscure, secret’), and holt is in occasional poetic use.

Dimrill Dale. The Common Speech name of Dwarvish Azanulbizar, Grey-elven Nan Duhirion. The Common Speech form is an accurate translation: the valley of the dim (overshadowed) rills that ran down the mountain-side. Translate by sense. Similarly Dimrill Gate, Dimrill Stair.

Doom. The word doom, in its original sense ‘judgment’ (formal and legal, or personal), has in English, partly owing to its sound, and largely to its special use in doomsday, become loaded with senses of death, finality and fate (impending or foretold). (Outside English doomsday is only preserved in the Scandinavian languages: Icelandic dómsdagur, Swedish domedag, Danish dómmedag; also Finnish tuomipäivä).

The use in the text as a word descriptive of sound (especially in I book ii chapter 5) associated with boom is nonetheless meant (and would by most English readers be felt) to recall the noun doom, with its sense of disaster. This is probably not possible to represent in another language. The Dutch version represents doom boom phonetically by doem boem, which is sufficient, and at any rate has the support of the verb doemen, which especially in the past participle gedoemd has the same sense as English doomed (to death or an evil fate). The Swedish version usually has dom bom, but occasionally dum bom. This seems (as far as I can judge) unsatisfactory, since the associations of dum are quite out of place, and dumbom is a word for ‘blockhead’ (German Dummkopf).

Mount Doom. This was (in Gondor) the Common Speech name of the volcano Orodruin (‘Mountain of red flame’), but was a translation of its other Elvish name Amon Amarth (‘Hill of Doom’), given to Sauron’s forge-mountain because it was linked in ancient and little-understood prophecies with the ‘doom’, the final end of the Third Age, that it was foretold would befall when Isildur’s Bane was found again; see the verses in I 259. Translate by sense: ‘Mountain (of) doom’ (in the sense ‘impending fate’). See Crack of Doom.

Dunharrow. A modernisation of Rohan Dūnhaerg ‘the heathen fane on the hillside’, so-called because this refuge of the Rohirrim at the head of Harrowdale was on the site of a sacred place of the old inhabitants (now the Dead Men).

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