The Lord of the Rings Family Tree | Hacker News Reader

The Lord of the Rings Family Tree

lotrproject.com

118 pointsEndXA40 comments

This is fantastic! I read the Silmarillion when I was in high school, and while it was a bit difficult to get through at times, I was in complete awe of the world Tolkien had built. Seeing it all laid out like this is amazing.

(OT, but it looks like the page's character encoding is broken. And of course Firefox decided to ditch the ability to set the correct charset manually. The "Repair Text Encoding" button isn't working for me.)

The trick to reading the Silmarillion is to not read it from front to back, but first part 3 (Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age), then part 2 (Akallabeth) and only then part 1 (Quenta Silmarillion). Part 3 is a super condensed version of LOTR.

I doubt I'll ever read it again, but if I do, I'll try to remember this :)

Would you still read the Ainulindalë and Valaquenta first, or would you save those for last?

I would also add that the chapter "Of Beleriand and its Realms" is OK to skip if it's not your thing, especially on a first read. It's mostly just describing what's on the map (of course it's still well written in Tolkien's prose). There are plenty of people that enjoy it, and there are plenty that don't.

Did Tolkein somehow keep track of all this in his head, or did he draw family trees himself?

And are there any examples of mistakes in LOTR where he messes up the chronology or anything like that?

There's a wiki page about inconsistencies: https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Possible_inconsistencies_in_...

Whenever that kind if thing happens, a wizard did it.

No need to bring magic in. Tolkien might have made a mistake in translating the original Quenya, or perhaps there were transcription errors among the Noldorin scribes. Other histories have these same problems.

An inconsistency Tolkien "solved" is most notably Glorfindel. The name was used twice in early drafts so he decided to merge those two persons even though they appears eras apart, and the first one had died. He did it by introducing the concept of reincarnation for the elves.

Kinda related, it looks like there are a few new(ish?) "world building tools" for fiction authors now. Would be cool if authors started using these and made the databases available together with the works.

https://chronographer.net

https://www.campfirewriting.com/

https://www.notebook.ai/

Tolkien created such a massive world. Languages, mythology, genealogies, and thousands of years of history. We are richer for it.

As are LLMs.

In like 15 mins I learned that Perin had a child that he named Farmir and that Aragorn (II) is a descendant of Elrond's twin brother who were both just half-elves themselves as their parents were both half-elven. And between Elrond and Aragorn there's like 60 generations of men.

Never really been interested in LotR lore, but I've read them multiple times and seen the movies many more times. Never seemed worth the times and sounded like dry work compared to the novels, but yeah this is pretty cool!

Launched in 2012, Wired did a feature on it with some exclusive infographics:

https://web.archive.org/web/20120911120029/http://wired.com/...

For some reason none of them wanted to take the name of an ancestor. Antigraphiphobia?

Durin VII?

Aragorn II did.

Maybe they called him AJ in his youth.

As siblings noted, there are some sprinkled through, particularly as the ages advance.

The out of universe answer is probably that Tolkien probably very much enjoyed making up these names, as an exercise in playing with and building his languages and world. He likely would have only fallen back to numbers either when truly and deeply stumped (I don't think this really would have happened often), or to signal something.

I also believe you can also see some of the Old English influence on Tolkien here. If you look at the Anglo-Saxon Kings, you see relatively little re-use of names. Instead (going off the top) you get Egbert, Ethelwulf, Ethelbald, Ethelbert.

I think it's pretty convenient that a name is unique. At least in living memory anyway.

It's also convenient when they're one-to-one; russian names, nicknames, and patronymics in stories are infamous for failure to be injective.

The hobbits have family names.

Tolkien (or his son Christopher) had said that names are meant to be unique in this world. See the matter of Glorfindel.

It would be inconvenient for the long lived races.

Aha! A free domain name generator! Not sure why this post was mis-titled?

This site makes me glad to have a 49" wide monitor. (Click around to the various projections: maps, statistics, etc. Very interesting!)

Balrog is missing. Not sure, if it's its own race or belongs to demon category.

Balrogs would be under the Maiar category, but most have no recorded name. I suppose the one from the trilogy could have been listed as "Durin's Bane."

gothmog, lord of balrogs? not in lotr though.

The Balrogs were Maiar, a category that includes the wizards (Gandalf, Saruman, etc.) and Sauron. The Balrog Gothmog is there, but not the one that appears in the Fellowship of the Ring, possibly because it isn't given a name.

The Balrogs (Sindarin for ‘Demon of Might’; Quenya Valarauko) were Maiar (“Ainur of lesser degree than the Valar”). Other Maiar were Gandalf, Sauron, Melian. Gothmog and “Durin’s Bane” are the only two named.

Basically bad Maiar.

Wow, Sam has been really busy after putting a ring on it

Evidently there are quite a few backstories waiting to be filled in.