On fim, 2008-07-31 at 13:26 -0400, Galen Johnson wrote:
Bilbo?
:D That would not keep the lawyers from knocking on Henriks door (symbolically speaking). If anything, they would be even more eager. Hobbit is the name of a species in J.R.R. Tolkiens stories, and it is only named in his stories. There are other things like the Shire that are associated with those that are somehow associated with Hobbit Monitor, and that might give some similarities to thoes stories. There is however a mythology that those stories are built upon, a mythology that is in the public domain.
Even though I personally like the name Hobbit Monitor best, or Hobbitmon, the name Gandalfr Monitor, could be an option to be considered. The name Gandalfr and the name Elf or Alf are much older than Tolkiens work, dated back to about the year 1300 AD in Völuspá and the Elder Edda by the icelandic authors.
See: http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Gandalfr
The Old Norse name "Gandalfr" appears in the list of dwarves in the Völuspá of the Elder Edda; the name means "wand-elf." Tolkien took the name along with the dwarves' names when he wrote The Hobbit in the 1930s.
He came to regret the creation of this "rabble of eddaic-named dwarves, [...] invented in an idle hour" (The Return of the Shadow:452), since it forced him to come up with an explanation of why Old Norse names should be used in Third Age Middle-earth. Meaning Of Names In The Lord Of The Ring - Anders Andersen's WebLog (324 words)
In an Old Norse poem, Tolkien found a list of dwarf names which included "Gandalfr." Since alfr means "elf," he began to wonder what an elf was doing in a company of dwarfs.
Tolkien interpreted the first element ("Gand") of "Gandalfr" to mean "wand." This gave Tolkien the notion that Gandalfr must be a sorcerer-elf who possessed a magic wand or staff.
Gandalfr, he theorized, must have joined the band of dwarfs to obtain some special sort of magical plunder.
-- Kindest Regards, Anna Jonna Ármannsdóttir, %& A: Because people read from top to bottom. Unix System Aministration, Computing Services, %& Q: Why is top posting bad? University of Iceland.