Name as Actuator and Substantiator

            Previously, in classes passed, we’ve identified a unique intellectual trajectory both in Tolkien’s own worldbuilding, and in his conception of the act of subcreation itself. This progression, which I will call Tolkienian evolution for sake of brevity, is the intellectual flow of language to myth, and then, from myth to history. While the relationship between all three of these elements of Tolkien’s Legendarium (and, these conceptual structures in the real world as well) are clearly bidirectional, it is also clear that Tolkien emulates this progression, and this evolution marks the conceptual aspects of his worldbuilding as well at the literal ones. This progression of language into myth into history was vital to Tolkien’s creative process and can explain much of the unique richness and depth that characterizes his worldbuilding. In his own words in a BBC Radio interview in 1964 (as Andrew Stump pointed out in our chat during class): “It gives me great pleasure, a good name. I always in my writing, always start with a name. Give me a name and it produces a story, not the other way about, normally.” This conceptual progression is meaningful specifically in our discussion of names. Names, for Tolkien, are able to actuate language, providing the definite meeting point where language creates myth, and myth creates history.

            Perhaps the clearest example of this is in Eärendil, a name which Tolkien describes (through a proxy character in The Notion Club Papers) as having come to him unbidden, through the Crist cycle of poetry. Tolkien, through Lowdham, describes the moment: “I felt a curious thrill, as if something had stirred in me, half wakened from sleep. There was something very remote and strange and beautiful behind those words, if I could grasp it, far beyond ancient English” (Sauron Defeated 236). Eärendil, of course, would become an eminent part of Tolkien’s legendarium, being also the father of the first king of Numenor, Elros, and Elrond. Interestingly, Eärendil also neatly embodies the progression discussed earlier: the purely linguistic name, Eärendil, leads to the mythological figures Eärendil and Elros, and finally, to the historical Elrond, and his status as a vital part of the history of the Second and Third Ages. Additional, Eärendil’s heritage traces backwards to Finwe and Indis, and his wife, Elwing, was saved by Ulmo, the Valar, who can be linked further back to Iru Eluvatar, bearing the full range from myth to history. This neatly sums up the way name actuates language: Eärendil, which stuck to Tolkien as interesting for mysterious, philological reasons, through name, set into action Numenor and Rivendell, the kingdoms of men and elves, and the history of Middle-Earth itself, and cascades backwards into myth, all the way back to Iru Eluvatar.  

            It is worthwhile for me to note that delineation between myth and history, in Tolkien’s fully-fleshed out Legendarium, is not quite binary. There is definitely a meaningful creative component to this distinction that one can trace through the first finished and public entries, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings being historical and the prior events they allude to being mythical (especially in the deep past of the First Age and before). However, as Tolkien developed and published works predating this period, the broad distinction becomes less clear, though it is clear that Tolkien’s intellectual and creative progression followed from language to myth to history.

The way name can set language into action is not only relevant to the creative process of Middle-Earth’s creation, but also to the text of the creation itself. In my previous discussion post, I discussed how, in the Old Forest, Tom Bombadil can be considered a stand-in for Tolkien, and the Hobbits a stand-in for us, as readers. Through Tom Bombadil’s storytelling, the Hobbits are whisked into an ancient world of deep and mythic undercurrents seemingly impossible large in scope and grandeur. It is meaningful to revisit Tom’s encounters with the Hobbits with a renewed focus on naming.

For example, when Old Man Willow traps Merry, the Hobbits do not comprehend the tree as a living, conscious being until Tom gives it a name. Only then is what they assumed was brute matter rendered animate in their eyes. Another meaningful point of reference is how often Tom Bombadil states (and sings) his own name (certainly more than any other character in the Legendarium). These usages of name give their referents substance; Tom and Old Man Willow become real, to the Hobbits, and likewise, following the analogy, to the reader, when given name. This use of name can likewise be observed in Gollum’s/Smeagol’s use of third person (and their own name) in speech later in the text, wherein it reinforces and substantiates their identity. In this sense, naming not only actuates the creative evolution of Tolkien’s Work, but also substantiates the legendarium within The Lord of the Rings as well.

            Given that names, in this case, can substantiate, it is meaningful to look at Tolkien’s concept of real language versus simple code set out in The Notion Club Papers. Real language is relational, it has motivated similarity between its sonic qualities, its phonemes, and its referents. This, of course, also helps to explain how the internal consistency of languages in the text makes them real: for words with similar referents, or referents encapsulating over already-named referents, to have unrelated sounds associated with them, would make them code speech, not language. Names are what ground this relationality, making language real. This is worthwhile to relate back to Eärendil, and to the roots that emerged from this beautiful sonic name, becoming referents to love and to the Eastern Sea, which would then become roots for other parts of the language and other names. This clearly shows how names ground the relationality which makes language real.

            Revisiting Eärendil, it is worthwhile to note also that what attracted Tolkien to the name most, from The Notion Club Papers, are the sonic qualities of the name itself. There is clearly a relation between language and music in Tolkien’s legendarium, and in its most primal sense, music is what created the world (through Eru Iluvatar) and, in his Mythopoeia, language is what allows for sub-creation (through the primal application of adjectives). Thus, in this sense, names are linked to the fundamental, mysterious creative compulsion that can be placed before the progression from language to myth to history expressed before. Thereby, names do not only actuate language, but they can, in certain cases, predate and stimulate it.

Thanks for reading!

- MHK