I went to a political fundraiser last night and was introduced to a 30-year-old man whose nametag read “Thorin O. [Common lastname].” I said, “Your middle name isn’t by any chance ‘Oakenshield,’ is it?” He smiled - a little wearily - and said that it was.
The original Thorin was, of course, the Dwarven king-in-exile from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. This particular Thorin said his dad was a big Tolkien fan and his mom didn’t need too much persuasion to agree to give him the names, although as a kid growing up in Alabama he often would have preferred something a bit less distinctive. He said only a handful of people a year ever recognize the name, including once (to his great embarrassment) a store clerk who, after seeing his name on his credit card, bowed and called him “Your Majesty” before dozens of other shoppers.
Nice guy. I’m just enough of a Tolkien geek to be a little envious.
Heh, it’s a funny story, but I kind of feel bad for the guy.
I got lucky that my dad wanted to keep the old family names* alive rather than naming his kids after Tolkien characters. Mind you, I love the Middle-Earth books, particularly the Silmarillion (although I like Children of Hurin’s telling of Turin’s story better), but that would be kind of weird to be named after a fictional character in a made-up language.
*I’m Henry William _____ 3rd, son of Henry T. ______, son of Henry William ______ 2nd, son of Henry William ________, son of George Washington ________, son of Heinrich Wilhelm _______, etc, and my older brother’s named George. I have at least two other relatives on that side named George, too. :rolleyes:
I once met a guy called Juan Ramón Jiménez. The whole room went silent for several extremely long seconds, then we went on. He later said that his parents both teach Spanish and that he’s quite tired of jokes about being a bad speller (the poet misspelled on purpose, there’s a couple of rules he just decided did not apply to him).
There’s no particular story. I know lots of Tolkien fans and have been to lots of conventions of them. I just heard several of them mention someone naming their daughter Arwen. I kept count and got to eight some years ago. I haven’t heard anyone lately give a child a name from Tolkien. I think all the Arwens I heard of are in their twenties or thirties.
I read that there were several babies named Rambo back when the Sylvester Stallone movies were popular. Which is particularly stupid because his character’s name was actually John. Rambo was his last name.
There’s a girl in one of my classes named Arwen, and I presume she’s probably in her twenties, as it’s an online class.
Before this semester, I had only ever met one other Arwen. Two years ago, I was an intern at a museum and found myself helping out with “Children’s Day” to get more hours. Somehow I got stuck in the “dress up photos” area, which wasn’t so bad if you had lots of antibacterial hand gel (somehow there are always kids with snot-covered hands), and during the day I heard parents calling “Arwen! Get back here so we can take some pictures!” several times in the space of twenty minutes. Little girl, about five years old. At least they didn’t name her something sillier.
I used to work with a lady named Galadriel. This was in the 80s, and she wasn’t a young lady then (I’d say she was probably in her 40s or 50s at the time) so I’d guess that she probably changed it herself.
I think it’s a very pretty name, even after I learned the proper way to pronounce it (before I heard it I always pronounced it in my head as “GAL-a-DRAYL.” A tough one to hang on a little girl, though.
