Tolkein
- "My name is TOLKIEN (not -kein)"
- ― J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 165[1]
A lot of people misspell "Tolkien" as Tolkein. This was already the case in Tolkien's time; several passages in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien show Tolkien's frustration about the matter.
History
The first recorded use of Tolkein stems from 1922. In Fifty New Poems for Children: An Anthology Selected from Books Recently Published, Oxford bookseller Basil Blackwell included the poem Goblin Feet, which he ascribed to a J.R.R. Tolkein. The name appears in the table of contents, above the poem and in the index.[2] Later, the name was used, according to Tolkien, by college, bank, and lawyer's clerks,[3] and more or less all who wrote to him.[4]
Origin
The name Tolkien has often been associated with Jewry. This was in turn because the Jewry of the time had predominantly Yiddish and German names, and the Tolkien family hailed from Saxony, Germany.[3] Since these Yiddish and German names often ended in -stein, it may have been a hypercorrection.
Notable occurences
- On one specific The Lord of the Rings promo, impressions with "Tolkein" had a click-through rate that was 50% higher than impressions that spelled "Tolkien".
- One of the songs of the Brobdingnagian Bards was titled "Tolkein (The Hobbit & The Lord of the Rings)", but it has been renamed since.
- Early copies of a reissue of Lin Carter's Tolkien: A Look Behind The Lord of the Rings in 2003 featured the word "Tolkein" on the cover. It has been corrected since.
- There is a parody of the Tolkien Society, the "Tolkein Society".
References
- ↑ J.R.R. Tolkien, Humphrey Carpenter, Christopher Tolkien (eds.), The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 165 (June 30, 1955)
- ↑ Fifty New Poems for Children at Tolkien Library
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 J.R.R. Tolkien, Humphrey Carpenter, Christopher Tolkien (eds.), The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 324 (June 4/5, 1971)
- ↑ J.R.R. Tolkien, Humphrey Carpenter, Christopher Tolkien (eds.), The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 347 (December 17, 1972)
