felicitous birthday , J.R.R. Tolkien ! The source ofThe Hobbitand The Lord of the Rings novel was born on this date in 1892 . rent ’s fete with a few facts about Middle - world ’s elves .
1. THE HOBBIT WAS AN AFTERTHOUGHT.
extremely low frequency were roaming Middle - earth long before Bilbo Baggins was even a spark in Tolkien ’s eye . Tolkien is most famous as a novelist , but his first love was language , and the elves were jolly much an excuse to make up notional lingua . Hestarted with Quenya(one of the Elven spoken language ) around 1915 , the year he finished his grade from Oxford and joined the military for World War I.
2.THE SILMARILLIONDIDN’T DO SO WELL AT FIRST.
Tolkien pull in his elf mythology in a sprawling , scholarly book that would eventually be turned intoThe Silmarillion . He sent the Bible off to his newspaper publisher , who took a hard pass . One publication house complained about the elf ’ “ eye - ripping Celtic names . ” Tolkien handled the rejection well , and promise to consider “ a continuation or successor toThe Hobbit , ” and everyone knows where that led . He never did get the book publish within his lifetime , but after his death , his Word Christopher managed to get it in print .
3. GALADRIEL IS ARWEN’S GRANDMA.
Illustration by Greg and Tim Hildebrandt viaFlickr// CC - BY - ND 2.0
You would n’t eff it to wait at her , but Galadriel is really , really , really quondam . establish on Tolkien ’s hundreds of page of elf history and mythology , fans estimate she ’s over 7000 age onetime . Galadriel married the elf Celeborn ( more about him in a moment ) and gave birth to a daughter , Celebrían . Celebrían go on to marry Elrond . The couple had three children : the twin boys Elladan and Elrohir , and their younger baby Arwen .
4. CELEBORN WAS ORIGINALLY NAMED TELEPORNO.
By the meter The Lord of the Rings novels roll around , Tolkien ’s catalogue of elf languages had expanded . The writer created consummate dictionaries and grammars for two primary linguistic communication , Quenya and Sindarin , and laid the foundations for many others . In former writings , Tolkien depict Galadriel ’s husband using his Quenya name , Teleporno , which means “ silver tree diagram . ” The author later decided to go with the Sindarin version , although we ca n’t imagine why .
5. THERE IS AN ELVISH WORD FOR “BUTT.”
Tolkien was serious about his languages , and he put so much study into them that they can be read and spoken . fan instruct Elvish lyric stratum , organize lingual guild , and raise scholarly works on the case . Others make it their business to learnrude word in Quenya(and thank goodness for these multitude ) . The word , by the way , ishakka , which literally understand to “ hams . ”
6. TOLKIEN’S ELVES MAY HAVE BEEN ALLEGORICAL.
Tolkien was a devout Roman Catholic , and he diffuse Middle - dry land with all kinds of religious themes . BiographerHumphrey Carpenter reportedthat Tolkien intended his elves to be a symbol of purity , of the human race before it fall down from grace in Eden . The gremlin were Tolkien ’s ideal people : noble , parochial , and monogamous .
7. TOLKIEN NEVER HEARD OF TAURIEL.
The agile wood elf Tauriel , toy by Evangeline Lilly in Peter Jackson’sHobbittrilogy , does not exist in Tolkien ’s novel . All of Tolkien ’s works wereincredibly dude - heavy , and Jackson and his penning better half felt the story would benefit from have at leastonelady in it . They brought Cate Blanchett ’s Galadriel intoThe Hobbitfor the same intellect .
