Jimtheviking on Tumblr wrote about how the Dwarven names in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit connect with Old Norse, especially Dwarf names listed in the poem Völuspá.
According to Jimtheviking, Tolkien chose a number of names from Old Norse and tweaked those names in an interesting way. Namely, Tolkien grasped Old Norse grammar well enough to know that the omission of one n from a name ending in –inn changed it from masculine to feminine. To quote Jimtheviking:
“Well, I give you the names of the Dwarves from the Hobbit, as they appear in Dvergatal (stanzas 14-16) and in the order they appear:
“Dvalins, Dáinn, Bívurr, Bávurr, Bömburr, Nóri, Óinn, Þorinn, Þráinn, Fíli, Kíli, Glóinn, Dóri, Óri
“Now, in the Hobbit, they’re named as follows:
“Dwalin, Dáin, Bifur, Bofur, Bombur, Nori, Óin, Thorin, Thráin, Fíli, Kíli, Glóin, Dori, Ori.
“Now, you notice something with the way those names got changed? That’s right, he changed the masculine -inn definite suffix to -in, which is feminine.
“That means that, at least grammatically, Dwalin, Dáin, Thorin, Thráin, and Glóin are female Dwarves.”
Then, moving on from purely linguistic, Jimtheviking continues with an intriguing argument:
“Since we know Tolkien was meticulous about his grammar, this was done most likely as an in-joke […] [emphasis original]
“But there’s a not-inconceivable chance that the Dwarves were using the masculine pronouns in Westron because that’s what the Men who met them used, despite the fact that a third of the company was female, and hey, it’s kinda neat to think he wrote a bunch of Dwarf-ladies going on an adventure.”
It is really interesting, isn’t it, to posit male and female Dwarves in Tolkien’s adventures?!
Poking around, I found versions of Völuspá that differ from the Dwarf list as given by Jimtheviking*. Not just the list itself, but also spellings differ depending on the edition you’re using (which isn’t rare at all in philology). Nevertheless, the main point stands: Tolkien changed names that had –inn in the original to just –in in English.
Of all Tolkien’s Dwarf names, he seems to have adopted Durin, Dwalin, Náin, Dáin, Bifur, Bofur, Bombur, Nori, Óin, Thorin, Thrór, Thráin, Fíli, Kíli, Fundin, Náli, Oakenshield (Eikinskjaldi, cf. Icelandic ‘oak shield’), Glóin, Dori, and Ori from the Völuspá.
Of them, Durinn, Dvalinn, Náinn, Dáinn, Óinn, Þorinn, Þráinn, Fundinn, and Glóinn are all originally spelled with a double n. (In addition, there’s a change from a double r to a single one in Bívurr / Bívǫrr, Bávurr / Bávǫrr, and Bömburr / Bǫmburr, which Jimtheviking does also comment on.)
Anyway, the whole thing kinda reminds me of the first time I read The Lord of the Rings, decades ago now. I was young enough that it was in translation, which means the young me ploughing through LotR was quite confused over the gender of some characters. The Finnish language doesn’t have grammatical gender, you see. Instead of he or she, we just have one third-person singular pronoun, hän, which is used of all people regardless of sex, gender, age, kinship, marital status, whatever, just like the English third-person plural they is. Normatively, in Finnish everyone is a hän.
Even at that young age, I knew that (apart from Astrid Lindgren) most of the publications, including those for the younger audience, centered boys and male characters. Contextually, I could tell that Frodo and Sam were male. Same for Legolas and Gimli, Aragorn and Boromir, and Gandalf and Elrond. Arwen, Galadriel, and Eowyn were female.
But Glorfindel? Maybe male, I thought, but there is nothing explicit at all in the Finnish translation. And Merri and Pippin? Somehow at that time I couldn’t make them out at all; indeed, they’re the two characters whose gender confused the young me the most.
Having grown up reading the Moomins, Pippi Longstocking, Ronia the Robber’s Daughter, The Famous Five series, and The Dark Is Rising sequence, I saw nothing odd in girls and women also going on adventures. So I thought it was quite plausible that Merri and Pippin could be female, and was too young to read all of the textual cues that imply they aren’t. (Remember that in Finnish the gender-neutral pronoun hän gives absolutely no clue whatsoever about anyone’s gender.)
The possibility of a linguistic in-joke regarding these Dwarven names really tickles the imagination and would be completely plausible of Tolkien. Interestingly, the name Gandalf also originally comes from the Dvergatal (see e.g. stanza 12 in Pettit’s 2023 edition, which lists the name as Gandálfr). A Dwarven Gandalf would, indeed, give quite a different vibe to LotR.
And now I kinda want new movies of The Hobbit, with the amazing attention to detail that Weta lavished on the effects and props in Peter Jackson’s versions, but with more heedful writing and with half the Dwarves in the party female. That would be a truly intriguing take!
Images: Thorin cosplay by Alexander Turchanin on 500px.
*) Dwarves are named in stanzas 10-16, starting with Mótsognir and Durinn. The undated Völuspá version linked to by Jimtheviking, edited by Guðni Jónsson, includes more rows than the newest edition I found. The extra lines must come from (an)other extant version(s) of the text.
Names in the undated Völuspá version linked to by Jimtheviking (ed. Guðni Jónsson):
Durin (stanza 10: Durinn)
Dwalin (11: Dvalinn)
Náin (11: Náinn)
Dáin (11: Dáinn)
Bifur (11: Bívurr)
Bofur (11: Bávurr)
Bombur (11: Bömburr)
Nori (11: Nóri)
Óin (11: Óinn)
Thorin (12: Þorinn)
Thrór (12: Þrár)
Thráin (12: Þráinn)
Fíli (13)
Kíli (13)
Fundin (13: Fundinn)
Náli (13)
Oakenshield (13, 16: Eikinskjaldi)
Glóin (15: Glóinn)
Dori (15: Dóri)
Ori (15: Óri)
Names in Edward Pettit’s 2023 edition of the Völuspá:
Durin (stanza 10: Durinn)
Dwalin (11: Dvalinn)
Bifur (11: Bívǫrr)
Bofur (11: Bávǫrr)
Bombur (11: Bǫmburr)
Nori (11: Nóri)
Thrain (12: Þráinn)
Thorin (12: Þorinn)
Thrór (12: Þrór)
Fíli (13)
Kíli (13)
Fundin (13: Fundinn)
Náli (13)
Oakenshield (13, 16: Eikinskjaldi)
Gloin (15: Glói)
Note that Pettit’s version doesn’t include Náin, Dáin, Óin, Dori, or Ori.
On, of, and about languages.
Co-Geeking 
This is so fascinating, both linguistically and for its storytelling potential. It makes me think of the stage production of Lord of the Rings that we saw in which more than a few of the roles were cross-cast, and not always in the way you would expect (a woman playing Gimli, a man playing Galadriel, etc.). How interesting it would be to see an adaptation that embraced the possibility of actually changing the genders of characters.
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