• emeralddawn45@discuss.tchncs.de
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    3 months ago

    Tolkien studied languages, so he would’ve understood and probably appreciated how often things are named purely based on what they do or their immediate aesthetic values. Language is all about communication after all. Sometimes that necessitates complexity, but it should always be as simple as possible without sacrificing nuance.

    • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de
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      3 months ago

      the vast majority of place names irl are just objective descriptors, optionally with that having been twisted through time.

      Exeter means “castle on the river exe”, starting as “esceancaster”; Aberdeen means “mouth of the river dee”; Amsterdam means “dam in the amstel”; Stockholm means roughly “log islet” as it started on the tiny central island which they put logs around.

      And of course in germanic areas there’s the very common “burg/borg”, which just means that the place has a castle/fortification.

  • jordanlund@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    In fairness, Mount Doom has multiple different names. Source: Finished the Silmarillion for the first time last night. :)

    Orodruin, Amon Amarth, Mount Doom.

    • papalonian@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      I used to parrot the “created multiple languages, named the place Mount Doom” meme up until I started getting deeper into Tolkien lore. Now I’m the obnoxious one that points out all the other names for Mount Doom, as well as translating other “cooler” names to show that they’re all similarly named (my favorite being Khazad Dum, or “Dwarf Hall”, followed by Cirith Ungol, or “Spider Cleft”).

    • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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      3 months ago

      Yeah, it’s like The Grand Canyon has a bunch of other names, but the one we stuck with is just: “The grand canyon. You know which one I’m talking about.” Sometimes the boring but obvious name works. It’s more believable that the people in this world renamed stuff to something obvious.

    • hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      3 months ago

      Mount Doom is also where the band Amon Amarth got their name from which is funny because they don’t have any songs with Tolkienian fantasy and they’re not really even huge Tolkien fans. It just sounded cool

  • rustydomino@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    I was gonna make a snarky comment about how Treebeard has a cool Elvish name, then I looked it up and “Fangorn” literally means “Treebeard” in Sindarin 🤷‍♂️

    • fibojoly@sh.itjust.works
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      3 months ago

      Yeah but his original name really is unpronouceable because it would take literal days to spell out, if I remember correctly. So it’s not completely unrealistic for others to want a shorter version. Like when Taumata­whakatangihanga­koauau­o­tamatea­turi­pukaka­piki­maunga­horo­nuku­pokai­whenua­ki­tana­tahu gets shortened to Taumata Hill in english.