The Tolkien Joke and Meme thread

Squint-eyed Southerner said:

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Beleg_Cúthalion said:

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Aldarion said:

Probably posted already somewhere, but this never gets old.

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Came across two 1972 Tolkien letters in which he came up with Elvish names for a friend/fan's bulls and cows​

342 From a letter to Mrs Meriel Thurston 9 November 1972
I am honoured by your letter, and quite willing that you should use the name of Rivendell as a herd prefix, though in my ignorance I don't think the actual valley of Rivendell would have been suitable for herd breeding.
I should be interested to hear what names you eventually choose (as individual names?) for your bulls; and interested to choose or invent suitable names myself if you wish. The elvish word for 'bull' doesn't appear in any published work; it was MUNDO.

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345 To Mrs Meriel Thurston
30 November 1972 Merton College, Oxford
Dear Mrs Thurston,
Thank you for your letter. Personally I am rather against giving strictly human and noble names to animals; and in any case Elrond and Glorfindel seem unsuitable characters, for their names which meant (1) 'The vault of stars' and (2) 'Golden hair' seem inapt. I recently played with the notion of using the word for bull I gave you, which introduced in the form -mund gives a fairly familiar sound (as in Edmund, Sigismund, etc.), and adding a few Elvish prefixes, producing names like Aramund ('Kingly bull'), Tarmund ('Noble bull'), Rasmund ('Homed bull'), Turcomund ('Chief of bulls'), etc. I wonder what you think of these?
Arwen was not an elf, but one of the half-elven who abandoned her elvish rights. Galadriel ('Glittering garland') is the chief elvish woman mentioned in The Lord of the Rings; her daughter was Celebrían ('Silver queen'). There was also Nimrodel. But I shouldn't really like these names to be given to heifers or cows. If you care for the Aramund type, I could invent a few female names. But though it is made on classical models rather than elvish, wouldn't the name of Farmer Giles' favourite cow – Galathea (in Farmer Giles of Ham) – be useful? which as it stands might be interpreted 'Goddess of milk'.
Yours sincerely,
J. R. R. Tolkien.

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Elves in silva said:

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Came across two 1972 Tolkien letters in which he came up with Elvish names for a friend/fan's bulls and cows​

I just came across these hilarious and wholesome letters (342 & 345) that Tolkien wrote in 1972 to a Mrs Meriel Thurston (who was either a fan or a friend) regarding Elvish names for bulls and cows.
I don't know exactly what Mrs Thurston wrote to Tolkien, but we can infer from Tolkien's response that she asked him if she could name her (bovine) herd "Rivendell". Tolkien probably facepalmed so hard he dropped his pipe, but he still replied politely that he didn't think the valley of Rivendell would be a good name for a herd, but offered to help her name her individual bulls if she would like that.
So Mrs Thurston wrote back later, and presumably suggested using the names "Elrond" and "Glorfindel" for her bulls, and "Arwen", "Galadriel", and "Celebrian" for her cows. I can't even imagine how much Tolkien must have cringed when he read this. But being the good Professor that he was, he patiently explained what those Elvish names meant and why they might not make for suitable bovine names, and proceeded to invent 5 Elvish names that are more appropriate for bulls and cows: Aramund ('Kingly bull'), Tarmund ('Noble bull'), Rasmund ('Homed bull'), Turcomund ('Chief of bulls'), and Galathea ('Goddess of milk').
This is now one of my favorite Tolkien anecdotes. Seriously, "Galathea, Goddess of Milk" is just perfection.

The full letters are included below:




Saw this the other day. I recently read the complete letters of J. R. R. Tolkien and had forgotten about it.

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