324 From a letter to Graham Tayar

[Tayar had asked about the use of the name 'Gamgee' in The Lord of the Rings, and whether the name 'Gondor' had been suggested by Gondar in Ethiopia.]

4-5 June 1971

In the matter of Gondar/Gondor you touch on a difficult matter, but one of great interest: the nature of the process of 'linguistic invention' (including nomenclature) in general, and in The Lord of the Rings in particular. It would take too long to discuss this – it needs a long essay which I have often in mind but shall probably never write. As far as Gondor goes the facts (of which I am aware) are these: 1) I do not recollect ever having heard the name Gondar (in Ethiopia) before your letter; 2) Gondor is (a) a name fitted to the style and phonetics of Sindarin, and (b) has the sense 'Stone-land' sc. 'Stone (-using people's) land'.¹²⁷ Outside the inner historical fiction, the name was a very early element in the invention of the whole story. Also in the linguistic construction of the tale,¹²⁸ which is accurate and detailed, Gondor and Gondar would be two distinct words/names, and the latter would have no precise sense. Nonetheless one's mind is, of course, stored with a 'leaf-mould' of memories (submerged) of names, and these rise up to the surface at times, and may provide with modification the bases of 'invented' names. Owing to the prominence of Ethiopia in the Italian war Gondar may have been one such element. But no more than say Gondwana-land (that rare venture of geology into poetry). In this case I can actually recollect the reason why the element *gon(o), *gond(o) was selected for the stem of words meaning stone, when I began inventing the 'Elvish' languages. When about 8 years old I read in a small book (professedly for the young) that nothing of the language of primitive peoples (before the Celts or Germanic invaders) is now known, except perhaps ond = 'stone' (+ one other now forgotten). I have no idea how such a form could even be guessed, but the ond seemed to me fitting for the meaning. (The prefixing of g- was much later, after the invention of the history of the relation between Sindarin & Quenya in which primitive initial g- was lost in Q: the Q. form of the word remained ondo.) ....

Gamgee is quite a different matter. In my early days gamgee was the word we used for what is/was more generally called 'cotton-wool'..... Recently in the English Place Names Society volumes on Gloucestershire (vol. iii) I came across forms that could conceivably explain the curious Gamgee as a variant of the not uncommon surname Gamage (Gammage, Gammidge). This name is ultimately derived from a surname de Gamaches.... but early records of the forms of this name in England, as Carriages, de Gamagis, de Gemegis, might well provide a variant Gamagi > Gamgee.

Your reference to Samson Gamgee is thus very interesting. Since he is mentioned in a book on Birmingham Jewry, I wonder if this family was also Jewish. In which case the origin of the name might be quite different. Not that a name of French or Francized form is impossible for a Jewish surname, especially if it is one long established in England. We now associate Jewish names largely with German, and with a colloquial Yiddish that is predominantly German in origin.¹²⁹* But the lingua franca of mediæval Jewry was (I was told by Cecil Roth, a friend of mine) of French or mixed French-Provencal character.