Language, Names, and Adamic Language

Tolkien, as we know, focused heavily on language and linguistic history, both of his fictional languages and of real languages. He pays special attention to names in his later writings about Middle Earth both because these are the most frequent occurrences of his created languages and because other people seem to have found names to be ripe ground for (allegedly incorrect) interpretation. In many of his letters Tolkien writes about his frustration with others’ attempts to find connections between his names/languages and “real-world” languages. A perfect example of this is his irritation at attempts to connect the name Sauron to the Greek “saurus” meaning lizard, and potentially thereby introduce a link to serpents and the Devil. But why this intense preoccupation with his names, both his own and external? Why are we so persistent in trying to find meaning in the names, and why is Tolkien so insistent that there is none, save what he intended?

            A definite possibility is some sort of authorial pride – this is Tolkien’s sub-creation and he doesn’t want people polluting it with nonsense that isn’t there. This is especially strong given his insistence that Middle-Earth, its languages and stories, was not invented by him but rather discovered. If so, he would want to protect the purity of his discovery and the concept that the languages especially are as he has set them out. But his insistence on the reality of Middle Earth is a double-edged sword. If it is real, why could the linguistic roots (though he doesn’t seem to like that term) of Greek “saurus” in some way come from Sauron, if not the other way around? I believe there must be something deeper tied to his love for and study of language.

            In theories of language there are two concepts I think are potentially relevant. First, there is the concept of a proto-language, a theoretical, hypothetical predecessor to all the languages of the Earth. This is also called at times the Universal Language, a language comprehensible to all people (and in some contexts all living things, as I’ll discuss later). The second concept is that of Perfect Language, which exists predominantly in more religious/mystical theorizations of language history. Perfect Language is inherently performative; to speak is to do. We have some vestiges of performative speech in our language, for example “I swear…” By saying that you swear, you do so; contrast that with a phrase like “I jump.” Merely saying that does not, in fact, make you jump in the same way saying that you swear binds you to an oath. In Perfect Language, however, all speech functions like the former example. Many religions have versions of this perfect language, also called Divine Language, and often Perfect Language and Universal Language are one and the same.

            In the Judeo-Christian context this language is often called Adamic. Though there has been much debate about what language Adam spoke, and if/when it changed, a large portion of theologians believe that in the Garden of Eden at least, Adam spoke the Divine Language; hence it is called Adamic Language. Part of the support for this is the narrative in Genesis 2 “So out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.” This has been read to imply something more than arbitrary naming; what Adam calls the creature, that IS its name. Adam is not just choosing names for creatures that, like our names for them, are essentially arbitrary and unconnected to the essence of the creature. The names Adam calls the creatures are recognized as correct even by God; they are the true names of the creatures. God also gives Adam dominion over all the animals, sparking a connection between naming and domination that can be seen in many religious, mystical, and literary traditions to this day.

            This may seem unconnected to Tolkien, and his persnickety responses to inquiries about the names in The Lord of the Rings; I will therefore try to connect the ideas succinctly. As we see in both real-world traditions of belief and literary works like LeGuin’s Earthsea, Paolini’s Inheritance Cycle, and Rothfuss’s Kingkiller Chronicles, to name is to define and to control. A true name is the complete story of something, and to know the true name is to know the thing completely and to have control over it. Even Tolkien alludes to the power of true names through the Ents.

            Names in the real world, and internally in literature, are not given because we know the qualities of the person who will bear the name. There are any number of reasons someone might be given a name, including the hope that they will have the associated qualities, or that they instill those in others. We do not, however, have the ability to give each other true names, for when we name we do not know any of the person’s story, let alone all of it.

            Not so for a writer, especially one like Tolkien who believes the whole of the story exists from the moment it is first begun. Tolkien can give true names, because he can understand all there is to understand of a character. Now why all the discussion of Adamic Language, etc. earlier? Because Adamic Language is inherently tied to creation. Tolkien, as a devout Christian who believed he was sub-creating, would have needed a sub-creative language. When he named things, he needed them to be as they were named, to have the stories tied to those names. Tolkien himself said that the stories follow the names for him; he cannot write a character and name it anything, rather given a name he will write the story of that name. To imply other stories in his names than the ones his sub-creative, sub-adamic language put there is almost heretical to his sub-creation. It is to imply that the language he used to create and name his world did so improperly, that it did not create but borrow from existing creation.

-Sam Sobel