September 17, 2003

The Noldor Were Once Gnomes
Niphredil

In response to Fallongirl5150: I believe that what we now know as the Noldor (the second of the three elvish kindreds) were once called Gnomes / Noldoli by Tolkien prior to 1930. Apparently he was worried that using common folk lore names would give readers the wrong impression of the races he was creating which were different to traditional folk lore creatures. That is why he started using Orc instead of Goblin, but he was stuck with wizards, elves and dwarves. I read somewhere that he did say once that he would have preferred "dwarrow" to dwarf, which he said, was more historically and linguistically correct, if he'd thought of it in time.