[Scott from the Left Coast]

It would be interesting to know of Tolkien's thinking on the naming of the Orcs. If I am not mistaken, in the Hobbit, he pretty much always refers to them as "goblins", with the only reference to "orc" being for the curved sword, which is called an "Orc blade".

In LOTR, only rarely does the term "goblin" appear, and generally they are called "Orcs". I wonder if, after more thought, he simply liked the more foreign, less supernatural, name "Orc" better?

[Overtaxed]

Back to the orc research!

In The Letters of JRR Tolkien (#144) he writes:

Orcs (the word is as far as I am concerned actually derived from Old English orc 'demon', but only because of its phonetic suitablility) are nowhere clearly stated to be of any particular origin. But since they are servants of the Dark Power, and later of Sauron, neither of whom could, or would, produce living things, they must be 'corruptions'. They are not based on direct experience of mine; but owe, I suppose, a good deal to the goblin tradition (goblin is used as a translation in The Hobbit, where orc occurs once, I think) especially as it appears in George MacDonald, except for the soft feet which I never believed in. The name has the form orch (pl. yrch) in Sindarin and uruk in the Black Speech.

[Restorer]

If I am not mistaken, in the Hobbit, he pretty much always refers to them as "goblins", with the only reference to "orc" being for the curved sword, which is called an "Orc blade".

Actually, there's a reference somewhere to certain goblins as being "great orcs of the mountains." But I couldn't say where!