On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 9:26 PM, Jenny Tait <piratejenny@verizon.net> wrote:
I know Wikipaedia is not a robust source, but here's something about Gandalf:
Randall
On 11/8/2012 3:45 PM, Wayne Morrison wrote:The husband could most likely answer most of those questions.
randall.m@gmail.com said:
In Tolkien's sources--the Elder Edda, I believe, though it's been a
while--Gandalf was a dwarf's name, so in the first drafts he may actually
have been a dwarf, not a wizard at all.
That's interesting. I thought I'd heard that "alf" was a particle that
meant "elf".
But aelf (the ae is a ligature which is really a rune called aesc, again with that ligature and pronounced ash) does in fact mean elf (or sprite or fairy). Often with aesc, the e was eventually dropped or just made into "ae" as with many Anglo-Saxon names. Gandulf was a real Anglo-Saxon name.
As Tolkien was a scholar of Old English, I'm sure none of this was unintentional.
I know Wikipaedia is not a robust source, but here's something about Gandalf:
When writing The Hobbit in the early 1930s Tolkien gave the name Gandalf to the leader of the Dwarves, the character later called Thorin Oakenshield. The name is taken from the same source as all the other Dwarf names (save Balin) in The Hobbit: the "Catalogue of Dwarves" in the Völuspá.[4] The Old Norse name Gandalfr incorporates the words gandr meaning "wand", "staff" or (especially in compounds) "magic" and álfr "elf". The name Gandalf is found in at least one more place in Norse myth, in the semihistorical Heimskringla, which briefly describes Gandalf Alfgeirsson, a legendary Norse king from Eastern Norway and rival of Halfdan the Black.[5]
The name "Gandolf" occurs as a character in William Morris' 1896 fantasy novel The Well at the World's End. Morris' book is a multi-part 'magical journey' involving elves, dwarves and kings in a pseudo-medieval landscape which is known to have deeply influenced Tolkien.
Randall
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