Last Wednesday, January 3, marked a long 132 years since the birth of John Ronald Reuel (J. R. R.) Tolkien, English author renowned for his epic fantasy novels “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit” as well as the lesser known but fans highly cherished “The Silmarillion.”
Apart from that, he was also a poet, a philologist and an academic at Oxford University as well as a linguist especially of old and even extinct now languages such as Old Norse, Old English, Gothic, Old Icelandic and Medieval Welsh.
Tolkien was born in Bloemfontein in the then Orange Free State, a Boer (Dutch speakers) independent sovereign republic, which nowadays lies within South Africa but was of Prussian descent as his family hailed from Kreuzburg near Königsberg (modern Kaliningrad, Russia).
His surname is actually Middle Low German and breaks down into Tolk-i(e)n that means “descending from Tolk (interpreter/negotiator).” Himself, all the same, mistakenly thought that it derived on German ‘tollkühn’ meaning “foolhardy/daredevil” instead.
He further displayed a particular flair and affection for constructing languages and even accompanying alphabets/writing systems that he employed largely in his fictional world of Arda (Earth), the Middle Earth within, and Eä (universe) such as Quenya, Sindarin and Adûnaic, in his well-known stories.
In fact, the relevant talent ran in the family as he first encountered a constructed (artificial) language in his early teens in Animalic, invented by his cousins Mary and Marjorie Incledon. They then moved on together to construct a more complex tongue in Nevbosh before Tolkien eventually came up with his first very own Naffarin.
Following his death (2 September 1973), his son Christopher took up his substantial notes and non published manuscripts to work up and release a series of works himself highlighted with ‘The Silmarillion’ (September 1977), thus adding further to the family’s hefty legacy in epic fantasy.