Uruks vs. Uruk-hai

Thanks MB. Interesting but ultimately unhelpful. Aragorn and Merry never use the term Uruk-Hai at all. Pippin does in recalling his experiences in being orc-dragged across Rohan. So this doesnt give us any extra insight. I don't think anyone is disputing that there are orc-men in the Shire.

Lantarion, you are mixing up my points.

If 'uruks' is unitalised in a piece of writing not made ready for publication that hardly proves anything. The UT makes a narratorial distinction between Uruks and half-orcs that is not present in LotR. That distinction is only observed by characters.

The fact that uruks is italised when used by the author in a published form tells me that it is the correct and untranslated form, and distinct from 'Uruk-Hai'.

'Uruks' is used twice in App. A:
"In the last years of Denethor I the race of uruks, black orcs of great strength, first appeared out of Mordor"
and:
"Others also came down from the Misty Mountains, many being great uruks in the service of Saruman"

In neither circumstance is it italicized.

Originally posted by Tar-Elenion
'Uruks' is used twice in App. A:
"In the last years of Denethor I the race of uruks, black orcs of great strength, first appeared out of Mordor"
and:
"Others also came down from the Misty Mountains, many being great uruks in the service of Saruman"

In neither circumstance is it italicized.

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Nor is it italicized in Gandalf or Gorbag's speeches. Indeed, it is quite inconsistently used, as ShagratU noted sometime ago. I think that if you look at when it was added to the text there is a bit more consistency, but still not total consistency. And of course, UT had CT for an editor, and we have no idea how often JRRT went back over it. Capitilization and italicization are two of the last things we should look for there for consistency to the LotR. As it turns out, UT is at least self-consistent, but again we don't know if that comes form JRR or CT- it could easily be one of the "minor details" he says he paves through for consistency: "In this book I have accepted from the outset that this must be so; and except in minor details such as shifts in nomenclature (where retention of the manuscript form would lead to disproportionate confusion or disproportionate space in elucidation) I have made no alterations for the sake of consistency with published works, but rather drawn attention throughout to conflicts and variations."

For an instance of an italicized anglicization I would point out silmarils in RGEO. This is in a form published by JRRT and an undoubted anglicization.

re: Melko Belcha's post

MB, I think you might be pushing too hard for what precisely constitutes man-orcs, orc-men, half-orcs, and goblin-men. Try out the following theory:

Uruk-hai refers to any orc/man hybrid. Now consider that the Orcs themselves are the only ones who use this term. Tolkien (in HoME v.10) makes a further distinction by seperating the collective Uruk-hai into two groups- the orc-men (orc being adjectival, thus mannish creatures with orcish blood) and men-orcs (orcish creatures with mannish blood). The term half-elf is generally used to describe any human/elven hybrid- those who are more Elvish, or those who are more mannish. It could then be possible that the term 'half-orc' is used in a similarly imprecise way- either men-orcs, or orc-men, or both groups collectively (like Uruk-hai). I would suggest that goblin-men is a perfect synonym for orc-men, as goblin (in the published LotR) seems to be used as a perfect synonym for orc.

This theory is supported by the following four quotes:
Tolkien as narrator in Morgoth's Ring saying Saruman's hybridization produced orc-men and men-orcs
Treebeard in speculating that human/orc hybridization leads to sun-tolerant orcs
Gamling at Helm's Deep stating that half-orcs, goblin-men, and Dunlendings are all unaffected by sunlight
The Uruk-hai themselves in closely associating the fact that they are Uruk-hai with the fact that they are not intimidated by the dawn. They don't say "we are the Uruk-hai, which is why we do not stop the fight for night or day, for fair weather or for storm. We come to kill, by sun or moon. What of the dawn?", but I think most people read it that way. The way Tolkien writes it is with a semi-colon, which seems to me to be a way of (partially) defining what it means to be a member of the Uruk-hai.

Re-read through the passages with orc/men hybrids (including HoME 9), and see if this theory fits or fails.

Originally posted by aragil
Nor is it italicized in Gandalf or Gorbag's speeches. Indeed, it is quite inconsistently used, as ShagratU noted sometime ago.

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_Snaga_ is making the argument and is referring to it being italicized when used in the narrative voice.

Originally posted by Tar-Elenion
_Snaga_ is making the argument and is referring to it being italicized when used in the narrative voice.

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Ah- didn't catch the narrative voice bit, which made me curious what everyone was going on about. As I suppose everyone here knows, uruks in the narrative voice is twice italicized, both in 'the Land of Shadow'- first to describe the leaders of the troop of orcs which Frodo and Sam fall in with, next to describe an entire column of orcs which crashes into the troop which Frodo and Sam have fallen in with. What people might not know is that this was the very first instance where Tolkien used the term 'uruks' (as CT notes) in LotR, making these two references rather conspicuous. The appendix entries for 'uruks' were both added sometime later- in HoME 12 the orcs in Denethor I 's time are simply 'black orcs' (bread by the Nazgul, not Sauron!), while the mention in Rohan is absent.
Sorry about the initial distraction snaga, hope this helps more. Good point- one made (in some sense) earlier by Greenwood- but we know more now than we did then.

Nearly two years since I started this thread (and over a year since I have been on the Forum) and the debate still rages!

I am impressed!

Tar-Elenion said:

_Snaga_ is making the argument and is referring to it being italicized when used in the narrative voice.

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It seems surprising that I would have to point out that the Appendices do not form part of the narrative! The appendices are not written in the same voice as the main text. That much should be clear enough.

You made no distinction between the Appendices or the main body of LotR or the narrative voice used in either place. Your statement refers specifically to its use "by the author in a published form" and you also said "Even the cases where the narratorial voice uses 'uruks' it is italised, to indicate it is NOT an english word". I have provided two instances of 'uruks' being "used by the author in a published form" both in "narratorial voice" and in neither of those instances is it italicized. I have also provided an instance of "the author in a published form" italicizing an undoubted anglicized word (silmarils).

I apologise, if it helps, for some slightly haziness of language in responding to Lanty's reply to my original point. The original post makes the point more clearly, and I refer you back to it. Italics are used in the narrative, by the narratorial voice to convey a non-English word in the correct form. The Appendix do not form part of the narrative, although they do form part of the text. It is obvious that the 'voice' here is different. The Appendices do not form part of the "recollections" of the hobbits! On the other hand, it seems somewhat doubtful to bring in 'The Road Goes Ever On' (to decode the acronym); which is clearly a seperate text entirely - indeed a musical composition! What evidence do we have that conventions were carried across consistently from one work to another? In any event it would be preposterous to suggest that the song lyrics contained in this latter work are in the same voice as the narrative of Lord of the Rings. While in a post-modern sense it is quite in order for you to bring your knowledge of this secondary text to pre-structure (or rather post-structure) your interpretation of Lord of the Rings, it seems bizarre to believe that this later work is required in order to accurately understand the main text.

Most readers will approach the text somewhat more straightforwardly, and decode the text to mean that the Uruk-Hai of Isengard were distinct from the uruks of Mordor. Aragil has shown why this should be so on a number of occasions. While you do not accept these arguments, and wish to demonstrate by reference to unpublished or later works that the reader is 'wrong', in fact you are demonstrating the escape of the text from the author; and your own ability to impose meaning based on external reference points. In essence no different from ascribing pointy ears to Galadriel.

But you raise the case of Silmarils/Silmarilli. Silmarilli is present in the Appendix italicised, but nowhere does it appear not in italics. Silmarils is used, not in italics, in dialogue. Aragorn uses it, and we are told he is translating the Lay of Luthien from elvish into Westron. That is a case where 'anglicization' could be reasonably said to be occurring. There we have a known form in another language (Silmarilli in elvish) and a definite case of translation. By contrast, Uruk-Hai is only ever used in conversations conducted in the Common Tongue, so there is no need for anglicization.

This has been apparent to me ever since I read about the Olog-hai.

I've seen various attempts at assigning meaning to -hai. None of them seem to address several very central points...

The Uruk-hai think they're better than regular orcs(and men, and even, possibly Nazgul)

The Uruk-hai are better than regular orcs. They can withstand the sun. This is a major innovation in orc genetics. Additionally, it is implied that they are smarter and stronger than your standard orc.

Uruk-hai is a name, which is why it's always capitalised.

Looking at those points, and then reading about the Olog-hai(which is also capitalised), and noting their enhancements, we are brought to a logical conclusion.

-hai means 'high' 'special' 'better'. It is a suffix that denotes the enhanced nature of the bearer.

The two most common meanings that -hai is given are 'race' and 'man'. If it were 'race', then ALL uruks would be Uruk-hai. If it were 'man' then the distinctions that have already been noted in this thread would not be needed. In fact, there would be no need for the term at all, as 'half-orc', 'orc-men', and 'goblin-men' are all used in addition to Uruk-hai.

This is not to say that Saruman didn't use humans when he was breeding the Uruk-hai(all the half-orcs would suggest that he was), it is to point out that Saruman thought his finished product was special. As Sauron thought his improved trolls were.

I agree with the gist of your argument (that Uruk-hai are distinct from Uruks), but I think some additional observations might be helpful. First off, Uruk-hai is an Orcish/Black-speech term, so while we have convenient names such as half-orc in English/Westron, it would hardly be redundant to have such a term in their native language. Second off, the point about "race" (or more properly "folk") making the terms "uruk-hai"/"uruks" equivalent is rather the point of the whole thread. I should say, if b.s. "hai"=folk, then Uruks is just an anglicization of Uruk-hai, and the two terms are relatively equivalent, in spite of the fact that Saruman's Orcs are quite distinct from Sauron's Uruks. Of course, that is not what I believe.

The redundancy I suggest comes not from the Uruk-hai themselves, but from the Company, who use the term distinctly from those others. Why would Aragorn or Gandalf choose to use black speech when they've got a word in the common tongue that already covers it?

While this does leave the precise meaning of -hai still undiscovered, it lets us eliminate errant possibilities.

I don't know whether this is of any use to anyone, but here it is anyway,
http://www.tolkienonline.de/etep/Tolkien/O/Uruk-hai.html

For those of you who are curious, I reposted my reply to Tar-Elenion from SF-FANDOM in a much shorter thread here (in the Tolkien Forum).

I really appreciated your reply to TE in the other thread. Many of your arguments had been raised before, some quite unsuccessfully by myself.

One matter I always found to be a rather slippery slope- uruks being a more general term, capable of application to Uruk-hai and non Uruk-hai alike. Both Greenwood and myself brought it up back in the days of yore (see here and here), but I always found it rather untenable. Of course, back then Greenwood and I were trying to show that Saruman's Orcs were differently abled than Sauron's, so that turned out to be a bit of a red herring.

I'm in absolute agreement with you in regards to the ambiguous nature of "rebel Uruk-hai". I actually was the first one on these boards to bring it up (back when God wore Huggies). To me the fact that there was no prior precedent for Uruk-hai referring to non-Isengarders sealed the deal, especially considering the humorous confusion in the rest of the orders of the tracker. To me, the oblique reference to Sam and Frodo as a 'great Elf' and sort of 'dwarf-man' respectively was amusing, and mistakenly referring to Gorbags rebellious scum as Isengarders fit much better into the passage than reading it as a completely accurate account, as TE was wont to do. I still say that that passage was a bit of a wink to the reader, much as Frodo's statement 'You and I, Sam, are still stuck in the worst places of the story, and it is all too likely that some will say at this point: "Shut the book now, dad; we don't want to read any more." '

You also got my support for the metaphorical references of JRRT's letters. I always thought that 'hobbit amongst the urukhai' cinched it, but this argument has never seemed to enjoy simple answers.

On a final note, you seem to be pretty knowledgeable about Tolkien errata. TE mentioned a possible publication of Tolkien's original LotR appendices by Wayne Hammond. The publication dates were set for 'Sept 2003' and sometime in 2004. Did anything ever become of this? It could be relatively informative to this debate, especially regarding the oft-used definition from UT.

Mr. Hammond is not nor was he going to be publishing the index material (this from private correspondence on the subject), he is still hard at work on the Companion and Guide now due out next year because of all the new information that he has found (and other concerns such as work, this from a public post out in the newsgroups).
From a public reply by Mr. Hostetter in the newsgroups, he finds no reason to believe that CT did or would make up the UT index entry.

Tar-Elenion said:

From a public reply by Mr. Hostetter in the newsgroups, he finds no reason to believe that CT did or would make up the UT index entry.

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The UT index entry, however, only refers to the Uruks in "The Battles of the Fords of Isen". The index itself was composed by Christopher SPECIFICALLY for Unfinished Tales.

There is, in fact, no reason (provided in any of the Tolkien texts) to believe that "Uruk-hai" is anything other than a tribal name.

But the argument will doubtless continue for years to come despite any supporting evidence for the contrary point of view. In Tolkien's usage, all Uruk-hai are Uruks, but not all Uruks are Uruk-hai. That usage can only change if someone publishes something written specifically by J.R.R. Tolkien in which he deliberately applies the terms interchangeably.

CT used his fathers rough draft index for LotR for translations and wording of some definitions found in the UT index. CT states that the defining statements are not restricted to matters mentioned in UT.
Otherwise you have your opinion I have mine.