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appendix f 1493
this character’s shortened name, Kali, meant in the Westron
‘jolly, gay’, though it was actually an abbreviation of the now
unmeaning Buckland name Kalimac.
I have not used names of Hebraic or similar origin in my
transpositions. Nothing in Hobbit-names corresponds to this
element in our names. Short names such as Sam, Tom, Tim,
Mat were common as abbreviations of actual Hobbit-names, such
as Tomba, Tolma, Matta, and the like. But Sam and his father
Ham were really called Ban and Ran. These were shortenings of
Banazîr and Ranugad, originally nicknames, meaning ‘halfwise,
simple’ and ‘stay-at-home’; but being words that had fallen out
of colloquial use they remained as traditional names in certain
families. I have therefore tried to preserve these features by using
Samwise and Hamfast, modernizations of ancient English samwís
and hámfæst which corresponded closely in meaning.
Having gone so far in my attempt to modernize and make
familiar the language and names of Hobbits, I found myself
involved in a further process. The Mannish languages that were
related to the Westron should, it seemed to me, be turned into
forms related to English. The language of Rohan I have accordingly
made to resemble ancient English, since it was related both
(more distantly) to the Common Speech, and (very closely) to
the former tongue of the northern Hobbits, and was in comparison
with the Westron archaic. In the Red Book it is noted in
several places that when Hobbits heard the speech of Rohan
they recognized many words and felt the language to be akin to
their own, so that it seemed absurd to leave the recorded names
and words of the Rohirrim in a wholly alien style.
In several cases I have modernized the forms and spellings of
place-names in Rohan: as in Dunharrow or Snowbourn; but I have
not been consistent, for I have followed the Hobbits. They altered
the names that they heard in the same way, if they were made of
elements that they recognized, or if they resembled place-names
in the Shire; but many they left alone, as I have done, for instance,
in Edoras ‘the courts’. For the same reasons a few personal names
have also been modernized, as Shadowfax and Wormtongue. 1
1 This linguistic procedure does not imply that the Rohirrim closely
resembled the ancient English otherwise, in culture or art, in weapons