'Frothi, Frodo - and Dodo and Odo'

Abstract

"frod (adj.) 'old, wise': A chiefly poetic word, regrettably without descendants, which means old and wise at once." --P.79 of 'Word-Hoard: An Introduction to Old English Vocabulary'. By Stephen Barney. New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1977. While there have been many vague etymological guesses at place and personal names in the writings of J. R. R. Tolkien, few if any have presumed to probe the eytomology or linguistic associations of Frodo, although many names such as Gandalf, Balrog, Shelob and the like have fairly obvious Germanic cognates. It is also noticeable that Tolkien's own 'Guide to the Names in The Lord of the Rings' published in 1975 by Jared Lobdell in the collection he edited entitled 'A Tolkien Compass', is in fact concerned entirely with the place names of Middle-earth and not with those of his animate creations. J. B. Bessinger in his 'A Short dictionary of Anglo-Saxon poetry' (1960) indicated (p.23) the occurrence of some 80 instances of the adjective 'frod' meaning "wise, experienced, old". The Barney Glossary already quoted indicates (loc.cit.) that 'frod' is the 220th commonest word in Old English poetry, where it occurs some 21 times. It also mentions a cognate in Gothic, 'frapi', "understanding", and Old English compounds in 'in-, un- (frod)' Henry Sweet's 'The Student's dictionary of Anglo-Saxon' (1896) notes (p.68) that it may be used with a genitive 'frod feores' ("wise of life"), or in the verb 'frodian', "to be wise".