Names and Titles
Gandalf calls Tom Bombadil the eldest being in existence; this is evidenced by his Sindarin name Iarwain Ben-adar (Eldest and Fatherless). Dwarves called him Forn (Scandinavian, meaning "Ancient" or "Belonging to the distant past"), Men Orald (compare to German: uralt, original old, eldest). All these names apparently mean "Eldest". Treebeard calls himself the eldest living being of Middle-earth and says that he was there before anyone else. However, Tolkien remarked in another context: "Treebeard is a character in my story, not me; and though he has a great memory and some earthy wisdom, he is not one of the Wise, and there is quite a lot he does not know or understand."
Read more about this topic: Tom Bombadil
Famous quotes containing the words names and/or titles:
“The world is a puzzling place today. All these banks sending us credit cards, with our names on them. Well, we didn’t order any credit cards! We don’t spend what we don’t have. So we just cut them in half and throw them out, just as soon as we open them in the mail. Imagine a bank sending credit cards to two ladies over a hundred years old! What are those folks thinking?”
—Sarah Louise Delany (b. 1889)
“I have known a German Prince with more titles than subjects, and a Spanish nobleman with more names than shirts.”
—Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774)