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tolkiens legendarium - Why do the trolls have civilized names?


In The Hobbit, the trolls' names, Tom, William, and Bert, don't seem to fit their "uncivilized" characters. Why did Tolkien give them those names?



Answer



Why he chose those particular names is, so far as I know, unknown. However, it would seem to be a part of The Hobbit's origin as a children's novel, initially unconnected (or barely connected) to the greater legendarium.



Although I don't have any text from Tolkien to confirm it, I would imagine the choice of names was meant to present the trolls as non-threatening1, comic figures; the sort of character you'd expect to run into in a children's fairy-story adventure. In The Annotated Hobbit, Douglas Anderson suggests that Tolkien did this by giving the trolls thick, Cockney accents:



Tolkien presents the Trolls' speech in a comic, lower-class dialect. This linguistic joke shows a perception for language similar to that which Tolkien ascribed to Geoffrey Chaucer in a long paper presented to the Philological Society in Oxford on May 16,1931.


The Annotated Hobbit Chapter 2: "Roast Mutton" Note 15



So it seems plausible that the names were also chosen with this in mind.


Tolkien would come to regret the choice of names later in life, as he reveals in Letter 153, nearly twenty years after The Hobbit was published:



I might not (if The Hobbit had been more carefully written, and my world so much thought about 20 years ago) have used the expression 'poor little blighter', just as I should not have called the troll William.


The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien 153: To Peter Hastings (Draft). September 1954





1 By which I mean, "presenting no credible threat". Yes, the trolls are threatening to eat the company, but because of the names and the thick Cockney accents, you know they're going to get out of it okay


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