Licensing of Hobbits and Orcs

[Malhost Zormaeril]

The "based on Finnish" for Quenya and "based on Welsh" for Sindarin cards are very often overplayed. What they really mean is that Tolkien's languages have some structure from them, not that he literally looted them for vocabulary and everything.

My understanding is that he applied most of the Finnish sound-changes to the PIE-lookalike Primitive Elvish to yield Quenya and most of the Welsh sound-changes to the same language to yield Sindarin. This way he gets a language that "sounds like" each but grammatically still contains quite a bit Indo-European flavour.

 

[Choranzanus]

Aaaaaargh. This is getting really out of hand! I don't have much time to respond now but here it is: I am not talking about Uighurs, I am talking about Hungarians, also known as "Ugri" as in Finno-Ugric language group etc. Singular in French from where it came to English would then probably be Ugre, that seems pretty straightforward to me. The word might seem obscure for modern English speakers but it is still common name for Hungarians in surrounding nations (the word Hungarian is actually incorrect and is only used in western Europe).

To understand how Hungarians become Ogres one has to understand some European history. For one thing the Turkic people were often seen as physically large to then inhabitants of Central and Eastern Europe (Slavs, who are not small themselves). I am not sure how much it is true of Hungarians but it is certainly true of Avars, whom Russians even called Obri(=giants). Next, we must consider their extreme cruelty as seen by then inhabitants of Europe (no offense to Hungarians). If you have read some accounts of foreign people written by Europeans of this age you would have understood: extreme cruelty=man eating (child eating specifically); that is simply how people of this time thought about things.

I cannot really give you specific citations, because I simply do not remember it, it is certainly in GURPS:Russia, but I have seen it before with more explanations.

 

[Desdichado]

I cannot really give you specific citations, because I simply do not remember it, it is certainly in GURPS:Russia, but I have seen it before with more explanations.

Well, that's not exactly a bastion of peer reviewed scholarship.

 

[dcas]

In the 1970s non-patent IP law was still pretty obscure and I doubt TSR had much idea of what their legal standing was.

And even if "Hobbit" was trademarked, it doesn't necessarily follow that it was trademarked in the context of gaming. There are something like 15 categories of products and services to which trademarks might apply.

 

[William drake]

Why does every one think that!!!!

Tolkien didn't creat Hobbits or Orcs or Goblins or Elves....they are much older than that. In most cultures: norse, celts, germanic peoples and others, there have always been these races, these story based beings woven into their culture. There names and descriptions differ some, but they are mainly the same. You can't copywrite them, they are Fantasy..just like you can't copywrite Vampire Or Werewolf.

Like Tolkien doesn't own ELROND, as in the name; but, if someone created an elf charcter in a story, who, in a sense was Elrondish, and by that I mean was the king, or leader of a group of elves was wise and all knowing, had a daughter (I mean almost using this character in the way that Mr. Tolkien did) then there might be a prob.

 

[Maggan]

Ah, but what's orc in Swedish? What're killer whale and ogre? For that matter, since Tolkien based elvish on Finnish, what're those words in Finnish?

Reminds of a story I heard about an MTG tournament in Norway. There's an MTG monster called the Lhurgoyf, which is (like many MTG monsters) an anagram of one WotC's employees. Someone was insisting that the Lhurgoyf was creature from Scandinavian legend.

I'm not sure the ancient "orc" has any meaning in Swedish.

In swedish orc = orch. Or "vätte" which would also be "goblin".

Killer Whale = Späckhuggare ("Lardchopper", sorta)

Ogre = Rese ("Really big guy") or Jätte ("giant") or just Monster. Even Troll might be substituted, but not in roleplaying games.

To sum up:

orc = orch or vätte
ogre = rese, jätte, monster or troll

/M

 

[Huw]

To understand how Hungarians become Ogres one has to understand some European history. For one thing the Turkic people were often seen as physically large to then inhabitants of Central and Eastern Europe (Slavs, who are not small themselves). I am not sure how much it is true of Hungarians but it is certainly true of Avars, whom Russians even called Obri(=giants).

The Avars aren't Turks, they're Caucasians. I've never heard the Turks described as large.

Regarding the original question of this thread, I believe the ogre<=orco theory, with later additions to the myth based on the folk etymology with the Magyars (aka Onagar and Ungar).

On a related note, anyone know of links between the Indian naga and the Naga ethnic group in Eastern India? Naga simply means snake.

EDIT: Found a dictionary (OED to be precise)! There are two other hobbity words:

hobbits: archaic term for howitzer (originally haubertz) (18th century)
hobet: small falcon (modern hobby or hob-hawk, from Latin hobetus, diminutive of hobe, a type of falcon)

Nothing to do with little hairy people in holes, but it shows that the word itself isn't unique.

 

[Kris]

Tolkien didn't creat Hobbits or Orcs or Goblins or Elves....they are much older than that.

I don't think anyone is doubting this (except maybe that there is some uncertainty over Hobbit - though be that a coincidence or not, who can tell)... and the terms above have been used to describe various things... elf for example has been used widely for anything from little mischievous pixie-type-things through to evil spirits.

I think the main thing here is that the term Hobbit used to describe diminutive humanoids that live in burrow-like cottages, with furry feet etc... etc... etc... is protected by the Tolkien estate. I'm sure that if anyone looks in the old red-box D&D basic set at one of the pictures of a halfling, it was pretty much a hobbit (furry-feet an all) - so I assume in the earlier edition they would be similar - and having them called 'hobbits' was just a bit too much (and hence the fuss).

I can only assume it was the same in using ent ('giant') for 14ft tall treemen... and that was changed to 'treant' (and also Balrog to Balor).

Anyone know if there were any more changes?

 

[Huw]

Anyone know if there were any more changes?

mithril/mithral