believed it to be French (which is formally possible); but if so it is an odd chance that it appears twice in the O[ld] T[estament] as an unexplained other name for Jethro Moses’ father-in-law. All my children, and my children’s children, and their children, have the name. [Letters, pp. 397–8]
At his confirmation in 1903 Tolkien took the additional name ‘Philip’ but used it only rarely.
In an autobiographical statement written in 1955 Tolkien explained his surname as ‘a German name (from Saxony), an anglicization of Tollkiehn, i.e. tollkühn. But, except as a guide to spelling, this fact is as fallacious as all facts in the raw. For I am neither ‘foolhardy’ [= tollkühn] nor German, whatever some remote ancestors may have been’ (Letters, p. 218). Tolkien’s aunt Grace Mountain (see *Mountain family) alleged that their surname had originally been von Hohenzollern, after that district of the Holy Roman Empire from which the family had come. ‘A certain George von Hohenzollern had, she said, fought on the side of the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria at the Siege of Vienna in 1529. He had shown great daring in leading an unofficial raid against the Turks and capturing the Sultan’s standard. This (said Aunt Grace) was why he was given the nickname Tollkühn, “foolhardy”; and the nickname stuck’ (Humphrey Carpenter, Biography, pp. 18–19). The story was also told of a French variation of the surname, du Téméraire, but may be no more than family lore. Research by Polish Tolkien enthusiasts such as Ryszard Derdzinski, reported on the website Tolknięty (tolkniety.blogspot.com) indicates that certain family members emigrated to England from Gdańsk around 1772, having belonged to a family of Gdańsk (Danzig) furriers whose history reached back into fourteenth-century Prussia and thirteenth-century Saxony.
On a copy of a George Allen & Unwin (*Publishers) press release, not before 1968, Tolkien wrote his surname phonetically and gave instructions for its pronunciation: ‘(tôl kēn) tĺkeen (sc. tolk does not rhyme with yolk; the division is tol–keen in which tol rhymes with doll and kien (NOT KEIN) = keen as ie in field and many other words’ (Tolkien–George Allen & Unwin archive, HarperCollins). It was, and is, frequently misspelled Tolkein. Tolkien complained of this in a letter to Graham Tayar in June 1971, ‘in spite of all my efforts to correct this – even by my college-, bank-, and lawyer’s clerks!’ (Letters, p. 410). On 12 October 1966 he wrote to Joy Hill at Allen & Unwin about a document from the Performing Rights Society: ‘I wish producers of documents would see to it that they give me my correct name. My third name appears as Revel twice in each of the Deeds. My surname is Tolkein on one of them’ (Tolkien–George Allen & Unwin archive, HarperCollins). Even on his tombstone Reuel at first was carved Revel.
The phonetic rendering of Tolkien’s surname should be understood to place the stress on the first syllable. The same pronunciation is described by Clyde S. Kilby in ‘Many Meetings with Tolkien’ (an edited transcript of remarks at the December 1966 meeting of the Tolkien Society of America), published in Niekas 19 (c. 1968). Henry S. Resnik, however, in remarks at a July 1966 meeting of the Tolkien Society of America, said on the basis of a half-hour telephone interview that Tolkien ‘pronounces his name tul-KEEN …. His American publisher pronounces it TUL-kin, and I took him as the leading authority, but apparently Tolkien knows’ (‘An Interview with Tolkien’, p. 43).
Arthur and Mabel Tolkien called their son by his second name, Ronald, as did his other relatives and his wife. In his letter to Amy Ronald, Tolkien said that when he was a boy in England Ronald was a much rarer name than it later became: it was shared by none of his contemporaries at school or university ‘though it seems now alas! to be prevalent among the criminal and other degraded classes. Anyway I have always treated it with respect, and from earliest days refused to allow it to be abbreviated or tagged with. But for myself I remained John. Ronald was for my near kin. My friends at school, Oxford and later have called me John (or occasionally John Ronald or J. Rsquared)’ (Letters, p. 398). Tolkien occasionally signed himself ‘John’ to Edith Bratt (*Edith Tolkien) when they were courting.
To intimates such as Edith or his Aunt *Jane Neave he would sign his letters ‘Ronald’. To friends such as *Katharine Farrer and *Donald Swann he signed ‘Ronald Tolkien’, and to *C.S. Lewis ‘J.R.R.T’. His formal signature was ‘J.R.R. Tolkien’. In 1964, when Allen & Unwin wanted to include a facsimile signature on the title-page of *Tree and Leaf, as was their custom for publications in their ‘U Books’ series, and sent Tolkien a sample with ‘Ronald Tolkien’, he wrote to Ronald Eames at Allen & Unwin: ‘I do not and never have used the signature “Ronald Tolkien” as a public or auctorial signature and I do not think it suitable for the purpose’ (3 February 1964, Tolkien–George Allen & Unwin archive, HarperCollins). In letters from his *T.C.B.S. friends Tolkien was called variously ‘Gabriel’, ‘Gab’, ‘Cludhari’ – nicknames whose origin is obscure and not mentioned in surviving correspondence – but mainly ‘John Ronald’, with isolated instances of ‘Ronald’ or ‘JRRT’. His few surviving letters to the T.C.B.S. are signed ‘John Ronald’. In a letter to *Joy Hill of 26 December 1971 he noted that his contemporaries used to write his initials as ‘JR2T’ and pronounce them ‘to rhyme with dirt’ (collection of René van Rossenberg).
According to Humphrey Carpenter, when Tolkien ‘was an adult his intimates [presumably other than family] referred to him (as was customary at the time) by his surname, or called him “Tollers”, a hearty nickname typical of the period. To those not so close, especially in his later years, he was often known as “J.R.R.T.”’ (Biography, p. 13).
The correspondence between Tolkien and the publishing Unwins, *Stanley and *Rayner, is an interesting lesson in the nuances of methods of address. In 1937 Tolkien wrote to ‘Dear Mr Unwin’ and signed himself ‘J.R.R. Tolkien’; Stanley Unwin replied to ‘Dear Professor Tolkien’. During 1944 they wrote to ‘Dear Unwin’ and ‘Dear Tolkien’. In 1946, after Stanley Unwin received a knighthood, Tolkien began his letters ‘Dear Sir Stanley’, while Unwin continued to write ‘Dear Tolkien’. Despite the fact that he had been addressing letters to ‘Dear Tolkien’ for some time, on 28 July 1947 Stanley Unwin wrote: ‘Dear Tolkien (If I may thus address you in the hope that you will call me “Unwin”)’ (Tolkien–George Allen & Unwin archive, HarperCollins). Tolkien replied: ‘Dear Unwin, I will certainly address you so, cum permissu [with permission], though it hardly seems a fair exchange for the loss of “professor”, a title one has rather to live down than to insist on’ (Letters, p. 120).
When Rayner Unwin began to correspond with Tolkien in 1952 he addressed him as ‘Dear Professor Tolkien’, and Tolkien replied to ‘My dear Rayner’ or ‘Dear Rayner’. At first Tolkien signed his letters ‘J.R.R. Tolkien’, but by about 1960 he began to sign ‘Ronald Tolkien’. On 15 December 1965 Tolkien wrote to Rayner Unwin:
Do you think you could mark the New Year by dropping the Professor? I belong to a generation which did not use Christian names outside the family, but like the dwarves [in his mythology] kept them private, and for even their intimates used surnames (or perversions of them), or nicknames, or (occasionally) Christian names that did not belong to them. Even C.S. Lewis never called me by a Christian name (or I him). So I will be content with a surname. I wish I could get rid of the “professor” altogether, at any rate when not writing technical matter. It gives a false impression of “learning”, especially in “folklore” and all that. It also gives a probably truer impression of pedantry, but it is a pity to have my pedantry advertised and underlined, so that people sniff it even when it is not there. [Letters, pp. 365–6]
From that point Rayner wrote to ‘Dear Tolkien’. Seven years later, on 30 March 1972, Tolkien wrote to Rayner Unwin: ‘Would it be possible for you to use my Christian name? I am now accepted as a member of the community here [Merton College] – one of the habits of which has long been the use of Christian names, irrespective of age or office – and as you are
