Re: Логиката на приказния образ / Фен клубове / Дж.Р.Р.Толкин

Версията homo+rabbit = hobbit е много широко разпространена, но е странно защо битува като теория и дори като съвсем сериозен и неоспорим факт само сред руските (по)читатели на Толкин. Истината, разбира се, е далеч по-различна от това на пръв поглед приемливо обяснение. :)

" The origin of the word hobbit was by most forgotten. It seems, however, to have been at first a name given to the Harfoots by the Fallohides and Stoors, and to be a worn-down form of a word preserved more fully in Rohan: holbytla 'hole-builder'."
LotR - App. F

"... But are they? I have no waking recollection of furry pigmies (in book or moonlight); nor of any Hobbit bogey in print by 1904. I suspect that the two hobbits are accidental homophones, and am content that they are not (it would seem) synonyms. And I protest that my hobbit did not live in Africa, and was not furry, except about the feet. Nor indeed was he like a rabbit. He was a prosperous, well-fed young bachelor of independent means. ... His feet, if conveniently clad and shod by nature, were as elegant as his long, clever fingers."
The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien Letter #25

"... The Ox. E. D. has in preparation of its Second Supplement got to Hobbit, which it proposes to include together with its progeny: hobbitry, -ish, etc. I have had, therefore, to justify my claim to have invented the word. My claim rests really on my 'nude parole' or unsupported assertion that I remember the occasion of its invention (by me) and that I had not then any knowledge of Hobberdy, Hobbaty, Hobberdy Dick etc. (for 'house-sprites') and that my 'hobbits' were in any case of wholly dissimilar sort, a diminutive branch of the human race. Also that the only E. word that influenced the invention was 'hole', that granted the description of hobbits. A review appeared in The Observer 16 Jan 1938, signed 'Habit' ... 'Habit' asserted that a friend claimed to have read, about 20 years earlier (sc. c. 1918) an old 'fairy story' (in a collection of such tales) called 'The Hobbit', though the creature was very 'frightening'. I asked for more information, but have never received any and recent intensive research has not discovered the 'collection'. I think it is probable that the friend's memory was inaccurate (after 20 years), and the creature probably had a name of the Hobberdy, Hobbaty class.... However, one cannot exclude the possibility that buried childhood memories might suddenly rise to the surface long after (in my case after 40 years), though they might be quite differently applied. "
The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien Letter #319

The solution he chose was more sophisticated: he selected the Old English words hol byldan, or some similar variant, meaning 'to build a hole', and developed the fictional compound holbytla (plural holbytlan). It is easy to see how, over several thousand years, this could evolve into 'hobbit'.

The success and ingenuity of this solution, though, hide one inconvenient detail: 'hole-builder' is, at best, a highly unconventional use of English. One can no more 'build a hole' than one can 'dig a house'. It's noticeable that Tolkien's later works tend to interpret holbytla as 'hole-dweller' rather than 'hole-builder'. In particular, he submitted 'hole-dweller' to the Oxford English Dictionary (see The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, No 316). We don't know what happened next - perhaps some sharp-eyed Anglo-Saxon-speaking researcher intervened - but the modern Dictionary has reverted to the more strictly accurate 'hole-builder'.

The last word on this topic came from the Oxford English Dictionary, when they decided to honour Tolkien by including 'hobbit' in their hallowed pages. For the etymology, they needed to establish definitively when the word was first used. Their conclusion effectively closes the matter:

"hobbit n. one of an imaginary race of half-sized persons in stories by Tolkien; hence ~RY (5) n. [invented by J.R.R. Tolkien, Engl. writer d. 1973, and said by him to mean 'hole-builder']"
The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English

Прощавай за дългите цитати.

Аргументирам се един вид. :D
Като цяло съм съгласна, че текстът е добър. Прочетох го с удоволствие, за което главна "вина" има Грахче.

:)))))))