Dwarfs or dwarves? (And Tolkien stuff)

Authoring Story Research and Design
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There are experts on the web saying the correct plural of dwarf is dwarfs, other experts saying dwarves.
Same with elfs/elves.
1.) Does anybody know what is correct?
2.) And what is more commonly used?

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Linguistics are descriptive, not prescriptive.

That said, the Oxford Dictionary claims both plurals of “dwarf” are permissible. To me, “dwarves” feels classier but use whatever you, as an author, want.

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As far as I can tell, “dwarves” is Tolkien’s invention. It should not be used for describing multiple people of small stature.

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From OED:

dwarves: In Germanic (esp. Scandinavian) mythology and folklore, and (later) fantasy fiction, games, etc.: one of a class of beings, typically described as short, stocky, bearded, human-like creatures skilled in mining and metalworking, and sometimes as having magical or supernatural powers.

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Ok, thank you very much for the answers. As my game will be Tolkien-influenced I will stick to “dwarves” which also feels more natural for me (probably from reading English language TTRPGs).

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Side note, Stephen Sondheim made a joke about this in Into the Woods where the Princes argue about the pronunciation.

[RAPUNZEL’S PRINCE]
Well, it’s sick!

[CINDERELLA’S PRINCE]
It’s no sicker
Than your thing with dwarves!

[RAPUNZEL’S PRINCE]
Dwarfs

[CINDERELLA’S PRINCE]
Dwarfs


[RAPUNZEL’S PRINCE]
Dwarfs are very upsetting

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Sorry, got sidetracked to the Oxford Learners’ Dictionary: dwarf noun - Definition, pictures, pronunciation and usage notes | Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary at OxfordLearnersDictionaries.com

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Yes. He comments on this in one of the appendices (noting that “dwarrows” would be more correct but nobody uses it). Because of this, “dwarves” is universally used in fantasy writing.

Except for Meredith Ann Pierce’s Darkangel trilogy, where she spelled it “duaroughs” (singular “duarough”) because she reads appendices. This did not catch on.

Steven Brust makes what I think is a very subtle joke in the Taltos series, which is that Vlad’s grandfather calls Draegarans “elfs”. (They’re not “elves” but they’re tall, handsome, and long-lived so it’s close enough.)

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The army of dwarves dwarfs the army of elves, unless you count the elfs.

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It’s a great example of some different processes in linguistics!

There are a couple of conflicting forces that drive language change. One is sound laws—regular changes that apply to the fundamental mechanisms of the language, rather than individual words. Latin had two different vowels, ƍ and Ə; in Romance these started being pronounced as o and ɔ; in Ibero-Romance, ɔ became we when stressed and o when unstressed. All perfectly regular and without exception.

Except
the result of this is irregular, from the perspective of a modern language-speaker who doesn’t know all this history! Now in Spanish “to sleep” is dormir, “we sleep” is dormimos, but “I sleep” is duermo and “she sleeps” is duerme. Sound laws are regular, and create irregularity.

So the conflicting force is analogy, the tendency to extrapolate from one form to another and smooth out these irregularities. It happens unpredictably and affects different words at different times, based on which forms speakers memorize and which ones they don’t. French used to have an alternation between ai and a based on stress (from Latin a), just like Spanish does now between ue and o. “To love” was amer, “we love” was amons, “I love” was aim, and “she loves” was aime.

But this irregularity made learning French really annoying, even if it was all totally regular from a historical perspective, so speakers smoothed it out; now it’s aimer and aimons. All nice and regular! 
except “love” as a noun is still amour, since it wasn’t as closely analogous to the verb forms. Analogy is irregular, and creates regularity.

The regular outcome of the sound laws from Old English to Modern English would be one dwarf, many dwerrows. But this isn’t a very common word, so analogy took over to smooth out that irregularity. Except
what should it be analogized to? Sometimes nouns ending in -f have plurals in -ves (leaves, wolves), sometimes they have plurals in -fs (roofs, chiefs). Both of those are viable things to analogize to!

Historically, “dwarfs” was the analogy that won out, but Tolkien pushed for “dwarves” because he thought it looked better, and nowadays most people writing about dwar(f|ve)s are imitating Tolkien in one way or another—if an elf and a dwarf are different sorts of things, you’re probably drawing on Tolkien’s influence.

So which is correct? Dunno. Analogy is irregular and unpredictable! We’ll see in another century or so which one’s won out and which one has died. If some tech CEO decides to weigh in on the matter by removing one from their spellcheckers, that would probably be enough to tip the scales (something like that has happened in the past!). Otherwise, “dwarves” seems to be winning at the moment, and it’s my default.

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and funny: I suspect that french tires was originally rather thin, because they have the irregular pneus instead of pneux (try to say pneusss
 with sibilant s :wink: :smiley: )

Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.

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Just out of curiosity, without practical application: It seems to me that dwarf developed out of twartalf and that dwarves were originally considered elves. I dunno if that’s true.

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A slight digression from the topic, but The Hobbit has been recently translated into Welsh. Tolkien had, I believe, produced copious notes to aid the translation of his works into other languages, but there are still challenges for translators. (see the quotes below)

A particular challenge was finding an appropriate term in Welsh for Elf.

Pearce shared: “There isn’t really an equivalent creature in Welsh mythology and J.R.R. Tolkien suggests that the translator may wish to coin a new term, or alternatively use an existing term even if it is for a monstrous or evil creature, as long as it has none of the associations of ‘fairies’ or similar.

“Accordingly I have chosen forms based on Ellyll, which is usually a malevolent spirit or troll-like creature in Welsh.

“For this reason I decided to use the less common form of Ellyllyn for the singular and Ellyll for the plural, because these felt more elegant and graceful than Ellyllon or Ellyllod.

“This is actually very similar to what J.R.R. Tolkien himself did, using the plural Dwarves rather than Dwarfs to differentiate his own creations from those appearing in other stories*.*”

from: Yr Hobyd: Tolkien’s The Hobbit to be published in Welsh

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My question is already answered, so I have no problem with digression (and I went off-topic myself).

In German Middle Earth publications the elves are call Elb (plural Elben). I’m not sure if this is actually an invention, since in Germanic/Nordish saga there was already Alb/Alben afaik.

But Hobbit definitely was an invention in English, too. Or?

And there were the Umlis, an invention by Iron Crown Enterprises (ICE) for their Middle Earth RPG (MERP). They are creatures similar to dwarves and very evil. Maybe they were inspired by the Duergar from Forgotten Realms and/or the Aghar from Dragonlance.

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Yes, that’s the general consensus and certainly what Tolkien himself stated; although the word itself does make earlier appearances.

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I just looked “Elb” up in the Grimmsches Wörterbuch and it seems to be a Germanified version of “Elf” (modeled after the real Germanic “Alb”). The article makes it even sound like the Grimms themselves made the word up because they thought it sounded more authentically Germanic and “Elf” felt too Englishy for their taste. :smile:

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Traditionally, the plural of ‘dwarf’ was ‘dwarfs’, hence we have fairy tales like ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’. As has already been stated, J R R Tolkien used ‘dwarves’ and this has had a huge impact on modern culture.

In contrast, the plural of ‘elf’ always seems to have been ‘elves’.

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I’ve had this conversation deep in the past. I’ve been a JRRT fan for a very long time. I was playing D&D and AD&D back in the late 70’s through to the end of the 90’s. Dwarfs are more than one plant. Dwarves is more than one scruffy, grumpy, axe swinging, chain mail wearing breaded stout short person. :smile:

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Welcome to the forum.

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As best I can find, we can trace it back to a Proto-Germanic *dwergaz and past that everything is murky. There’s a Sanskrit term dhvaras “demon” that could be related, but evidence is scant.

So, dunno!

Oh, that’s fascinating! I’m so glad people are still using Tolkien’s translation notes.

The linguistics of hobbits and their names is really fascinating; in-universe, their name comes from a long-ago contraction of the Westron words for “hole builders”, so Tolkien took the Old English words, contracted them together, and evolved that word into Modern English to get “hobbit”.

The same goes for all the individual names; Peregrin “Pippin” Took is in-universe Razanur “Razar” TĂ»k, but Tolkien (as the “translator” of the texts) wanted to ensure readers recognized that “Razanur” is a fancy and slightly exotic name, “Razar” is a nickname that turns it into something simple and homey, and “TĂ»k” is the “Smith” of the hobbit world.

Tolkien’s elvish linguistics don’t always make sense, but the degree to which he “translated” the Westron names to convey the right vibe in English is awe-inspiring. It’s something I struggle with a lot, with real ancient texts: how do I properly convey the difference between these two ways of addressing someone in Ancient Greek, without adding so many extra words that it gets clunky?

I love that people still use the Grimms’ work nowadays! I teach about it as an important historical thing, but I had no idea it was still used as a reference.

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