The creation of a complete onomasticon of Tolkien's works, compiling and exploring the names of his characters, would be of great use to the community. For the student of literature, the interplay between the etymology of names and the narrative role of characters is crucial. For the student of medievalism, the adoption and evolution of name forms and naming patters from early medieval texts into modern literature, and the diffusal of these trends from Tolkien's work into broader fiction, is of interest.
In attempting to construct such an onomasticon, we are led by von Feilitzen's musings on the construction of an Old English onomasticon, given at a working conference at Erlangen in 1975. This draws us back to a number of important questions that we must bear in mind when trying to construct an onomasticon of Tolkien's works. Which texts are we to use? How are we to present the data? How are we to deal with the complex questions of translation?
