That is how he got his name, though he always called himself * Tolkien actually "contradicts" himself between The Hobbit and The Two Towers, for in the former Tolkien stated of Gollum (bold added):Īnd when he said gollum he made a horrible swallowing noise in his Tolkien's love for languages, does he ever make reference to any real meaning to the word/name gollum, either in-world or out-of-world meaning? That is, did he choose that word/name to reflect a further intention of meaning from ancient languages on Earth ( one comment below had a link that referred to what I believe is a copy of this speculative study on a connection to Old Norse I tracked down a working link based off my quotation from the link that I put in my reply comment below) or on Arda (in which case perhaps the Ring intentionally caused that particular sound to emit from him as a hidden side meaning)? Or is the name purely Tolkien's utilization of onomatopoeia within the world of Middle-Earth history? The first link above specifically references from The Hobbit that Sméagol himself never referred to himself as Gollum, which would seem to show that the interjections of that sound in his speech are in fact not self-references and thus adding some weight to having no in-world meaning, even though they occur at times when one might think he is referring to himself (but see the * below). But it was a distinct and consistent gurgling sound, for often in Sméagol's speech he interjects the " gollum" sound. From other answers on this site, it is clear that within the general story arc, the name Gollum derived from a sound Sméagol was often inadvertently making within his throat, described as a sort of "gurgling" that others heard and so named him by that sound.
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