[hobbit] "Hobbit" name legal stuff; slight name change will happen

[Anna Jonna Armannsdottir]

On fim, 2008-07-31 at 13:26 -0400, Galen Johnson wrote:

> Bilbo?


:D 
That would not keep the lawyers from knocking on 
Henriks door (symbolically speaking). If anything, 
they would be even more eager. 
Hobbit is the name of a species in J.R.R. Tolkiens 
stories, and it is only named in his stories. 
There are other things like the Shire that are 
associated with those that are somehow associated with 
Hobbit Monitor, and that might give some similarities 
to thoes stories. 
There is however a mythology that those stories are 
built upon, a mythology that is in the public domain. 

Even though I personally like the name Hobbit Monitor 
best, or Hobbitmon, the name Gandalfr 
Monitor, could be an option to be considered. 
The name Gandalfr and the name Elf or Alf are much 
older than Tolkiens work, dated back to about the year 
1300 AD in Völuspá and the Elder Edda by the icelandic 
authors. 

See: 
http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Gandalfr 


The Old Norse name "Gandalfr"
appears in the list of dwarves in
the Völuspá of the Elder Edda; the
name means "wand-elf." Tolkien took
the name along with the dwarves'
names when he wrote The Hobbit in
the 1930s. 

He came to regret the creation of
this "rabble of eddaic-named
dwarves, [...] invented in an idle
hour" (The Return of the
Shadow:452), since it forced him to
come up with an explanation of why
Old Norse names should be used in
Third Age Middle-earth.
Meaning Of Names In The Lord Of The
Ring - Anders Andersen's WebLog
(324 words)

In an Old Norse poem, Tolkien found
a list of dwarf names which included
"Gandalfr." Since alfr means "elf,"
he began to wonder what an elf was
doing in a company of dwarfs. 

Tolkien interpreted the first
element ("Gand") of "Gandalfr" to
mean "wand." This gave Tolkien the
notion that Gandalfr must be a
sorcerer-elf who possessed a magic
wand or staff. 

Gandalfr, he theorized, must have
joined the band of dwarfs to obtain
some special sort of magical
plunder.

-- 
Kindest Regards, Anna Jonna Ármannsdóttir,       %&   A: Because people read from top to bottom.
Unix System Aministration, Computing Services,   %&   Q: Why is top posting bad?
University of Iceland.
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