Quiz: Prescription Drug or Tolkien Elf? :)

[Anarion]

I got 24 on the elf one. That was surprisingly hard, and I'm impressed at how similar the prescription names are to Tolkien names. Maybe chemists are all just Tolkien fans?

[Eldariel]

I got 24 on the elf one. That was surprisingly hard, and I'm impressed at how similar the prescription names are to Tolkien names. Maybe chemists are all just Tolkien fans?

Most medical names stem from Latin while Tolkien's vocabulary is largely Celtic so both are parts of the Indo-European family. Thus the resemblance isn't that surprising especially since both have a motive to avoid the common Germanic and Romance stems.

[Aedilred]

Most medical names stem from Latin while Tolkien's vocabulary is largely Celtic so both are parts of the Indo-European family. Thus the resemblance isn't that surprising especially since both have a motive to avoid the common Germanic and Romance stems.

Weren't the elven languages supposedly based on Finnish?

[factotum]

Weren't the elven languages supposedly based on Finnish?

Finnish was an inspiration for Quenya (e.g. high Elven), while Welsh was the basis for Sindarin (common or garden Elvish). A lot of the Elvish names from the books are actually Sindarin--Galadriel and Celeborn are both Sindarin names, for example.

[lio45]

Same here for the Imin. 28/30. Of course, my wife has psoriatic arthritis, I suffer from diabetes and migraines, and two family members are battling cancer. I've actually SEEN half the drugs on that list. Heck, I'm taking Frova now.

I could easily have imagined Frova Baggins as the Tolkien character's twin sister, but obviously I'm not taking the drug... :P

[Winter_Wolf]

17 of 30. Proving that I know neither elves nor dugs very well, but I know drugs a lot better than elves. Possibly owing to drug commercials but no elf commercials.

And one of twelve on the PS/MLP thing. And that one pretty much by accident. Proving that I know even less about these two fields than I do about elves and drugs.

Now I want someone to start a rock band called Elves, Drugs, and MLP Porn Stars.

[Eldariel]

Finnish was an inspiration for Quenya (e.g. high Elven), while Welsh was the basis for Sindarin (common or garden Elvish). A lot of the Elvish names from the books are actually Sindarin--Galadriel and Celeborn are both Sindarin names, for example.

Weren't the elven languages supposedly based on Finnish?

There's a lot more to it than that. Basically, the things that really enthralled Tolkien were Welsh words. He used a parallel to the word "cellar door" - a word most English-speakers will acknowledge sounds beautiful when you detach the form of the meaning. Tolkien said Welsh was a treasure trove of such words - full of words which have an aurally pleasant phonemic guise. In Finnish he fell in love with the grammar. He didn't simply just mix'n'match languages nor take pieces and stitch them together: he took great care to make the languages have a natural aesthetic to them and spent a lot of time letting the ideas and languages evolve.

Quenyan grammar in general is based on Finnish while the vocabulary has many traits in common with Latin (but influences from Germanic roots, Celtic roots and indeed Finnish). There's something that looks vaguely Finnish or Uralic but largely the vocabulary is still strange to us Finnish-speakers. Though of course, double consonants on both sides of syllable boundaries and long vowels (spelt with accent in standard orthography) occur in Quenya and are typical for Uralic languages. Honestly, Quenya is probably closer to Latin than Finnish in terms of word stress, prosody, pronunciation, and phonology in general. The most pervasive feature of Finnish in the languages is the grammar; I could easily inflect the various Elvish forms just by being a Finnish native speaker. The logic is the exact same.

Now, Sindarin is indeed based heavily on Welsh but it lacks a complete grammar. It's has irregularities but features lesser use of suffixes (it uses functional words more). Affixes are used and both, different word forms and affixed forms might feature changed word stems (a trait inherent to Uralic languages but one that was not present in Quenya - Quenya behaves more like Latin in that regard).

[Themrys]

27. I've read the Silmarilion.

@Lio: Frova could be a hobbit or human name, but not an elvish one. Just doesn't fit the pattern.

[Mister Tom]

26.
I have a dry flaky rash on my feet; my doctor has given me an ungoliant to take care of it

[The_Snark]

I'd look for a second opinion in your place.

[joshspace]

Haha! I got a 25.

[nyjastul69]

20 for me. I've read the Hobbit and LotR fairly recently, bit it's been over 30 years since I read the Silmarilion.

[BayardSPSR]

24 seems to be in the usual "haven't re-read the Silmarillion this year" range, so I'm satisfied with that.

In other news, I will now be using random pharmaceuticals to name my elf NPCs.

[The Fury]

I only got 19. Though I'm pretty sure that I have a bottle of Tolkien elves in my medicine cabinet. Maybe I should talk to my doctor about that.

In other news, I will now be using random pharmaceuticals to name my elf NPCs.

Since one of my players named their character after Rasheed Wallace, and another followed suit and named hers after LeBron James, I decided to name any female elf the party encounters after an NBA player. Prescription drugs might have been the smarter option, but I'm sort of committed to the bit now.

[Lethologica]

The real question is, which poor sod gets to be named after Metta World Peace?

[sleepy hedgehog]

Yup, I got 17.
I beat guessing randomly, mostly because I recognized a few drug names...

[Arcane_Secrets]

Harder than I thought - 24.

I have used drug names for my characters in the past.

Azor always made me think of a prescription drug that dwarves would take. I had in my head a commercial where dwarves talk about living a stressful life (cut to battle scenes) but to deal with high blood pressure they take Azor (at which point, like in An Unexpected Journey, a dwarf holds up an Erlenmeyer flask which gets crushed by the two pendulum hammers and forms a prescription drug bottle).

I've otherwise used botanical Latin names, like Chione. They're not necessarily nearly unpronounceable but they're sufficiently obscure that it's not immediately obvious what I'm doing.

[miner3203]

24 - I'm going to stick myself in the "hasn't read the Silmarillion recently enough to get all the elf-names to stick" boat. Although yeah, a lot of the drugs were really obvious--most of the ones I got wrong were because I guessed drug and it was actually an elf...lol

[Grytorm]

Got only 23/30, it seems like there is a subtle difference between Elves and prescription drugs. But it is hard to say what exactly that would be.

[DataNinja]

it seems like there is a subtle difference between Elves and prescription drugs. But it is hard to say what exactly that would be.

I think it's that elves protest a bit more when you try to swallow them, with a drink of water.

[trueexciting]

You scored
22 out of 30

[TheNotoriousSMP]

I got 19. Not bad considering it's been a while since I've read any of Tolkein's work.

[laotze]

Reminds me of another popular quiz:

Drug or Pokemon?

Similarly amusing how close the names are sometimes.


Anyway, I got 27. Not really surprising. I've been reading The Silmarillion off and on, continuously for about 15 years.

Apparently I'm rusty as hell on my Tolkien but still a perfect score Pokemon master after all these years.