Tom Bombadil - New Information

[BluestEye]

About Tom Bombadil...
I was born in Israel and tuss Hebrew is my mother laguage. It is known Tolkien himself knew a lot of languages and used a lot of his knowledge to create his Elvish languages.
I`m realy sure Tolkien used some Hebrew writting-laws to create his languages. Two major examples are:

1) The Sufix which changes a word to be Masculine-Plural in Hebrew is the Sufix: IM.
An example to this is the word "Binian" which means in Hebrew "Building". "Binian" is a Masculine-Singular word in Hebrew. If you want to say "Buildings" (Masculine-Plural) you must add the IM sufix to the word "Binian"... so "Buildings" in Hebrew will be "Binianim".
Another similar example is the word "Yeled" which means in Hebrew "Boy". If you want to say "Boys" you must add the IM sufix, and so "Boys" will be "Yeladim".
In Tolkien`s epics he used the same IM sufix to add Plural-meaning to words. Some examples are "Galad - Galadrim", "Falath - Falathrim", "Rohir - Rohirim"...

2) And now we come to the meaning of the Elvish name of Tom Bombadil: Yarwin Ben-Adar...
The word "Ben" in Hebrew means "Boy; Son of...". In Arab it is quite similar, but they don`t have the letter "E" so instead of saying "Ben" the Arabs say "Bin".
In Hebrew and in Arab there are a lot of Surnames which means: "Son of... someone". For example, in Arab, the Surname of the terrorist Osama is "Bin-Laden", and it means: "Son of Laden". In Hebrew there are also a lot of such family names, "Ben-Ezra" ("Son of Ezra"), "Ben-Basat" ("Son of Basat") and much more.
So when we think of Yarwin`s surname in Hebrew origins we can come to the conclusion that Yarwin was meant to be the son of Adar (Yarwin Ben-Adar"). But what is Adar? Adar is also an Hebrew name which means many interesting things:

1) Adar is the Sixth month of the Hebrew calendar.
2) Adar is also a citrus in Hebrew.
3) Adar is glory, splendor, majesty.
4) Adar is to respect, to honor, to show deference.
5) And Ha-Dar means: "That Lives"...

It is quite interesting that all these names signify things that are very close to nature, trees, living and majesty, things that are the characteristics of Tom Bombadil.

Just wanted to share with you this information

BluestEye

 

[Niniel]

As to your first point, JRRT writes (Letter 144):

Rohir-rim is the Elvish name for people that called themselves Riders of the Mark or Eorlings. The formation is not meant to resemble Hebrew. (...) I Grey-Elven the general plurals were very frequently made by adding to a name some wotd meaning 'tribe, host, horde, people'. So Haradrim, the Southrons: Quenya rimbe, Sindarin rim, host; Onodrim, the Ents.

So it's just 'rim' that is added after a name.
As to your second point, that's really interesting, especially the 5th point you make, since Goldberry says of Bombadil 'He is'.

 

[Walter]

Hmmmm - Deja vú?

I could swear we already discussed that issue...


Edit:
Okay, I'm not totally senile (yet) t'was here:Was Tom Bombadil Jewish? (A serious thread...)

 

[Celebithil]

Is it possible that Tolkien did it subconsciously? He may not have intented it to look like Hebrew but it could have happened unintentionally.

 

[Niniel]

I don't think so. Of course there are words that he used without knowing where they came from, and then turned out to have some meaning in another lanuage. But Rohirrim is a very consciously constructed word, that accords with all the grammatical rules that he made, so I don't think had any subconscious influences.

 

[jallan]

According to “The Etymologies” in The Lost Road (HoME 5):

ATA-   father. PQ *atū. *atar: Q atar, pl. atari; hypocoristic atto. N adar, pl. edeir, eder; ada. Cf. Ilúv-atar. Ilk. adar, pl. edrin; adda.

So adar means ‘father’. Also:

YA-   there, over there; of time, ago, whereas en yonder [EN] of time points to the future. Q yana that (the former); yá formerly, ago; yenya last year [YEN]; yára ancient, belong to or descending from former times; yáre former days; yalúme former times [LU]; yasse, yalúmesse, yáresse once upon a time; yárea, yalúmea olden. N&#160iaur ancient, old(er); io ?) ago.

Since the name Iarwain ben-Adar is translated ‘Oldest and Fatherless’ then Iarwain must be from iaur ‘old’ and mean ‘oldest’ while we know that adar means ‘father’. So Ben- must mean &#8216without’ or something similar.

You can certainly find many other words and names in Elvish that somewhat resemble Hebrew words, but you can find similar resemblances in any languages and anyone who has tried to invent a language learns that such things are impossible to avoid, just as in real languages words of smilar sound, especially short words, occur by chance in unrelated tongues, sometimes even with related meanings.

Adar ‘father’ might possibly have been suggested by Gothic atta ‘father’ and Gaelic aither ‘father’ and iaur suggests English ‘yore’, but I would not say that Tolkien must have had these words in mind when inventing adar and iaur.

There is more Hebrew influence in Khuzdûl, the language of the Dwarves, which was intended to sound Semitic, based mostly on triconsonantal stems as are Semitic languages.

 

[Beor]

Iarwain ben-adar.

This is a most interesting proposition. ben-Adar...son of the Father could mean son of the creator, Oldest son of the Father, and as such, one of the first born of the world.

Tom Bombadil is most surely an Ainur or Valar spirit who 'went native' once he beheld the beauty of Middle Earth when first wrought, before the sun, beneath the stars.

 

[jallan]

But Tolkien claims Tom Bombadil was an intentonal enigma, which means he would not agree with any definite statement of who or what Tom was.

Also, ben almost certainly does not mean ‘son’ in Sindarin.

In one of his letters Tolkien got quite angry at a correspondent who started offering words and names from various different languages to explain Tolkien’s names (including some from the Bible).

Tolkien was quite adamant he did not work that way and that seems to be the case, e.g. Elbereth as nothing to do with Biblical El-berith ‘God of the Covenant’.

If Tolkien says Iarwain Ben-Adar means ‘Oldest and Fatherless’ then he probably should be taken at his word, especially when one of the words and part of another word can be shown to have those meanings elsewhere in Tolkien and one cannot generally find meaningful multi-lingual puns in his invented languages.

 

[Cian]

Originally posted by jallan: Also, ben almost certainly does not mean ‘son’ in Sindarin.

I think Pen is from the Quendian root PEN 'lack, be without' ~ Ben-adar showing lenition (adjectival) of *Pen-adar 'Lacking a father'.

Iarwain looks as if it might contain a superlative -- but for interest maybe, David Salo once offered a variant possibility stating that -wain is not obviously a superlative suffix, and that Iarwain could mean "Old (and) new" ... Iar- relating to Iaur 'old', and might be (hypothetically) added to S. *gwain 'new'. The month of January was called Narwain "New Sun" ~ Quenya Narvinye.

Interesting in any case IMO.

¤

 

[jallan]

Are either pen or PEN found anywhere (with appropiate meaning), or are they suppositions of linguistic theory?

I think the latter, though in my opinion very reasonable ones.

But I would not mind discovering that either pen or PEN exists with a related meaning.

 

[Cian]

The root PEN 'lack, be without' is from WJ, and there's a Quenya adjective penya 'lacking, inadequate' published in VT 39.

Seems to fit well in Ben-adar but I'm not aware of *pen itself being attested. Cheers

¤

 

[jallan]

Ah yes, Cian, I’d forgotten that.

The Ñoldorin Loremasters record that Pendi was used by the Teleri only of the earliest days, because they felt that it meant ‘the lacking, the poor’ (*PEN), with reference to the indigence and ignorance of the primitive Elves.

Case proved!