Broke: vulcans don’t play games, as they are illogical
Woke: vulcans absolutely play games as resting so as to recuperate after exertion is highly logical and they have a marked preference for the Terran game, chess
Third eye slaming open at 4:27am: vulcans love poker. They won’t mention it and they’ll justify it but after first contact they descended on poker like a murder of starving ravens as a unified cultural phenomenon
I don’t watch Star Trek really but “Competitive emotional suppression with probability assessment and observation skills” is the most Vulcan leisure activity I can imagine.
One of the ballsiest things Tolkien ever did was write 473k words about some hobbits called frodo, sam, merry, and pippin and then write in the appendices that their names are actually maura, ban, kali, and razal.
This just in: Eowyn and Eomer’s names actually start with the letter “L.” [source for other nerds]
What you’ve got to understand is that everything Tolkien wrote was him pretending to merely translate ancient documents. He was writing as if the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings were actually been written by Bilbo, Frodo, and Sam (or Bilba, Maura, and Ban) and he was just some random contemporary academic translating it all into English for us.
There are many languages in his books, but generally speaking, everything written in English in the books is a translation of the language “Westron.” Therefore any names that come from Westron, he translated. Names coming from other languages, like Sindarin, he left as they were. Why? IDK. Maybe because the stories are from a hobbit perspective and hobbits speak Westron, so he wanted the Westron parts to sound familiar and the other languages/names to remain foreign?
“But Mirkwoodest!” you cry, “The word ‘hobbit’ isn’t an English word! And the names Bilbo Baggins, Frodo Baggins, Samwise Gamgee, Peregrin Took, and Meriadoc Brandybuck” all sounds super weird and not like English at all!”
Psych! They are in English! (Or Old English, German, or Norse.) Once again you underestimate what a nerd Tolkien was. Let me break it down:
In Westron, hobbits are actually called “kuduk,” which means “hole-dweller,” so for an English translation, Tolkien called them “hobbits” which is a modernization of the Old English word “holbytla” which comes from “Hol” (hole) and “Bytla”(builder).
“Maura” is a Westron name which means “Wise.” Weirdly enough, “Frodo” is an actual Proto-Germanic name that actual people used to have and it means the same thing.
“Razanur” means “Traveler” or “Stranger” which is also the meaning of the word “Peregrin(e)” This one is a twofer because “Razar” means “a small red apple” and in English so does “Pippin.”
“Kalimac” apparently is a meaningless name in Westron, but the shortened form “Kali” means “happy,” so Jirt decided his nickname would be “Merry” and chose the really obscure ancient Celtic name “Meriodoc” to match.
Jirt chose to leave “Bilba” almost exactly the same in English, but he changed the ending to an “O” because in Westron names ending in “a” are masculine.
I’m not going to go on and talk about the last names but those all have special meanings too (except Tûk, which is too iconic to change more than the spelling of, apparently).
The Rohirrim were also Westron speakers first and foremost, so their names are also “translations” into Old English and Proto-Germanic words, i.e. “Eowyn” is a combination of “Eoh” (horse) and “Wynn” (joy/bliss).
“Rohirrim/Rohan” are Sindarin words, but in the books, they call themselves the “Éothéod” which is an Old English/Norse combo that means “horse people.” Tolkien tells us in the “Peoples of Middle Earth” that the actual Westron for “Éothéod” is Lohtûr, which means that Eowyn and Eomer’s names, which come from the same root word, must also start with the letter L.
The names of all the elves, dwarves, Dunedain, and men from Gondor are not English translations, since they come from root words other than Westron.
The takeaway from this is that when a guy whose first real job was researching the history and etymology of words of Germanic origin beginning with the letter “W” writes a book, you can expect this kind of tomfoolery.
Notes: Sorry I said “Razal” instead of “Razar” in my original post I’m a fraud.
Tolkien was the most extra son of a bitch my goodness
This is why C.S. Lewis wanted to punch Tolkien in the face sometimes.
In the great hierarchy of nerds, Tolkien remains at the very top.
No one can top Tolkien.
pretend? pretend to translate????
He also gave instructions for translators, directing them to translate English-derived names like the hobbits’ but not to translate Elvish/Dwarvish/etc names like Arwen.
This is also why I think a fanfic written from the perspective of another scholar arguing with Tolkien’s translation would be fun
Just gotta say I love how flawlessly Uhura slips into her mirror persona. This is NOT something she’s comfortable with — she’s very open about her trepidation with Kirk — but as soon as he reassures her that he’s fully in her corner and believes in her, she just… makes it happen. Seamlessly. Even Kirk makes enough little missteps for Spock to easily sus out that something isn’t right, but our communications officer here just zooms right under the radar of everyone on the bridge.
I know the reason for this is probably closer to “writers wanted to focus on the Kirk/Spock dynamic,” but I really prefer the in-universe explanation of “Uhura has literal ovaries of steel and there is nothing any universe can throw at her that she can’t handle if you just give her 1 second to process it with Jim Kirk.”
I think it’s funniest if Luke and Anakin have completely opposite opinions on sand actually
Anakin: I don’t like sand, it’s course and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere UGH
Luke: I like sand. Reminds me of home. The good old days when all I had to worry about was not being allowed to go to tosche station to pick up some power converters :’) I would happily take a sand bath
In conclusion, there are two kinds of Skywalkers
It makes it funnier to know its canon too tudijdjsjdjxjd
