Licensing of Hobbits and Orcs

[Desdichado]

As a sidenote, the word ogre is not related to orc but is probably derived from Ugre which means Hungarian.

Not according to the Oxford English Dictionary, which gives it an etymology from Orcus--like orc.

Where are you getting this stuff from? You keep making these claims that--based on what I've read, which is actually quite a bit--are just flat out wrong.

 

[gizmo33]

As a sidenote, the word ogre is not related to orc but is probably derived from Ugre which means Hungarian.

Uighur is not the same as Hungarian AFAICT. The Uighurs were Turkic and the Hungarians were primarily from a group called the Magyars (during the relevant time period). "Hungarian" AFAIK does not denote an ethnicity.

I would find the Uighur-Ogre connection more convincing if it came with a reference. I've seen it before but etymology is easily faked. It generally takes a linguist who understands the subject to put together something that holds up to academic scrutiny. People have been making up etymologies for words for centuries since it's so easy to do. Here, I'll do it:

Ogre comes from the word "ogle" because ogres in early mythology used to sneak around and ogle people with the evil eye.

-There, easy and wrong (though if I would have said it with enough authority and no references maybe I could have convinced someone).

 

[Desdichado]

D'oh! Good point! I should have caught that too--the Hungarians are of course Magyars, not "Ugres". Perhaps you meant Uyghur, which are among the farthest east of the Turkic peoples, with most of their population making up the Uyghur Autonomous District of China, also known as Xinjiang?

 

[Roman]

I don't pretend to know the etymology of the word ogre at all, but I don't find the Hungarian connection Choranzanus postulated all that far fetched. Magyars are, after all, one of the Ugric peoples and Hungary was known in Hungarian as "Ungarn" prior to the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian empire. How the word Ungarn arose, though, I do not know.

 

[gizmo33]

a hob is a small rough lump of something

According to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, hobbe is a nickname for Robert, and etymologies connect hob to hobbe to Robin Goodfellow (Robin being diminutive for robert) and indicate that as the source of the "hob" in hobgoblin. "hobnails" possibly relates to "hubbe" (etymonline.com) but I didn't see (and remain skeptical) of it's connection to the word "hobgoblin".

I suspect Tolkien was using this sense of the word when he came up with Hobbit as a race name

But why suspect? Tolkien was pretty specific in his reasoning, which I believe is in the appendix of the Return of the King, and as I recall it has to do with the "holbyt" thing that's already been cited in this thread.

I would be very skeptical of etymologies that rely on similar sounding elements like "hob" when it's a fairly common word fragment in English. A good etymology is usually built on linguistic principles and historical documentation and I would be very skeptical of etymologies based on similar sounds alone.

 

[Roman]

Since the etymology/origin of the word ogre is a bit off topic here, but I am definitely interested in the topic, I started a new thread on the matter: http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?p=3342183#post3342183

 

[gizmo33]

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?

As far as I know, this statement that "elvish was based on Finnish" has misleading connotations. I remember reading that Tolkien admired Finnish and I would find it plausible that he might have borrowed some sounds or grammatical constructs. But I'm not at all sure I would call that "basing it on" since Tolkien was interested in constructing a language according to linguistic principles and not simply just borrowing one.

"Borrowing one" would make more sense if he were simply in need of a language to use for his novels, but IIRC he in fact was in need of a novel to use for his constructed languages. Thus, I would not expect to find parallels in vocabulary between Finnish and elvish (but then again citing sources does wonders for changing my mind) because Tolkien's main interest was in inventing his own languages.

 

[Desdichado]

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.

 

[gizmo33]

Nonetheless, the concept of orcs having pig heads probably comes from this - though that could just be Gygax's way of making D&D orcs different enough from Tolkien's orcs.

It happens that "orc" in gaelic might mean pig. Nouns in Celtic languages can change their initial consonents based on their part of speech, so that "t'orc" is how the word generally shows up in folklore. Someone who knows Irish could probably clarify this.

However I wouldn't be surprised if the Celtic language "orc" was the source for the Orkney islands as well as the artists (perhaps not even Gygax's) interpretation of orcs as pig-like. Also, I'm not suggesting that Irish "orc" and Latin/Old English "orc" have anything to do with each other - except by coincidence or the confusion of modern RPG authors/gamers.

 

[gizmo33]

I was under the impression that Hobbits and Orcs are both Tolkien's inventions. Yet, apparently WotC is unable to use Hobbits (at least by name), yet Orcs are used widely by both WotC and other RPGs. What gives?

On the original topic. I find both the concepts of hobbit and orc to be fairly unique to Tolkien and I would suspect that their respective use/avoidance is based on historical happenstance.

I think "orc" in the Old English poem Beowulf (which I last read online, should be easy enough to find) pretty simply meant demon, not "humanoid creature that's a stereotypical barbarous human". Thus I think Tolkien used the word orc and the rest was his invention. Perhaps these nuances were not as easily understood by a court of law.

The derivation of hobbit IIRC was pretty much laid out in the appendix of the Return of the King, and I don't remember Tolkien citing any folklore source. Especially when you try to define a hobbit to someone (furry feet, pipe-smokers, live in holes with doors on them, dislike machinery) and then try to compare it to a folklore equivalent. IMO it's fairly unique.

When people say that orcs and hobbits come from folklore, I think they are way over-generalizing based on a few similarities to existing creatures. And every time I've seen such a statement, it never really cites a reference or gives me much to work with. If someone can point me to a traditional fairy tale where a small elfish-creature has furry feet (besides the grugach, of course) or has Beowulf battling a horde of orcs streaming out of a cave, then I would stand corrected (and better informed).