I'm curious

[serai]

Why do so many hobbit fic writers insist on using the Scottish word bairn, when Tolkien himself said that hobbit babies and children are called fauntlings or faunts? I can see digging up a word if he had never addressed the issue. (Though I'd try to find an English word, or at least one derived from the same sources, rather than something Scots. From what I understand, Tolkien didn't like Scots or Gaelic, just like he didn't like French, and took great care not even to use words that English had appropriated from them.) But in this case, he actually had a word, told us what it was, and people still don't use it.

Can someone explain this? Because it makes no sense to me at all.

Comments

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

Bairn from fairbairn, as some folks have pointed out, although I do use faunt because I have read some of the letters. (Certainly not all of them!) And when I use "faunt" I'm careful to mean very young child at that. But I wouldn't hesitate to use tot or toddler or baby or infant if I felt it fit better in the narrative.

As for mathom, I'm curious about the two definitions you refer to? I tend to use it to mean a gift which is primarily important because it is a gift, although the item in question has no inherent usefulness to most people. Kind of like "white elephant" or "kitsch" or "dust-catcher". You'd never buy a mathom for yourself. It had to arrive in the ribbons and paper that made it acceptable. If I say I'm giving someone a mathom it's very similar to saying I'm giving them a "small token of my affection", rather than that I'm dumping something useless into their lap. The whole point is the wrapping, and if the recipient gets more joy from the object in question than I expected, why marvelous!

[serai1.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's the way I use "mathom" as well, because that's the way Tolkien used it. But a lot of Tolkien fans now use it to mean any kind of gift, even one of value, and that makes me a little nuts, frankly.

Your use of "faunt" is the same as mine, and I wouldn't hesitate to say "child" or "baby" either. In fact, I've used the word "faunt" in my writing only when a hobbit is talking, either in dialogue or in the narrative. If the voice was not a hobbit's (like, say, mine when the narrator is neutral), then I'd use "baby".

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

It occurs to me that perhaps "bairn" is a regionalism from the northern parts of the Shire. Considering how very many dialects and regional terms have been identified on one very small island for English in general, I can certainly see words being used differently in say Buckland than Hobbiton. And even stranger usages in Bree!

[serai1.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I could see that, maybe. But it's the use of "bairn" in the narration that I don't get at all. If the narrator isn't a hobbit (neutral voice) what's the point of using a word that would only be used by a hobbit (if hobbits use it)? In fact, it takes the hobbity sound out of the word. If a writer wants to make clear that an odd-sounding word is being used because the people she's writing about use it, then the word should only be used by those characters, not by a narrator who presumbly isn't one of them.

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Depends on how close the focus on one of the characters is, I suppose. Lately I've tended to write third person close focus, and that sort of narrative lends itself to using some terms which would occur to the object of the focus, if that makes any sense at all.

But... of course... depends is a powerful exception!