in the appendices Tolkien says that the characters are not *actually* called what they appear to be called in the text, that he has translated their "real names" into approximately similar english names, eg samwise gamgee is really banazir galbasi

@flglmn @kalinah the hobbits are turkic??

@joolsd @kalinah kind of! it's explicit that they are NOT english, that the jolly-old-englande type names they're given in the text are not their actual names, they're just names that for english readers won't create a false impression of "foreignness"

@flglmn @joolsd @kalinah Heard an interestingly similar idea about movies set in non-English-speaking places, where actors speak English w "local" accents; it isn't accurate, but viewers are immersed (ie. no subtitle reading) while also giving a sense of this being a "foreign" (ie. not English) place.

@flglmn @joolsd @kalinah This was on the Blank Check podcast ep about the recent Ferrari movie Also to be clear I don't find subtitles distracting, this was just the structure they were explaining, it's clearly pretty Anglo-centric etc etc