Westron

From his schooldays, J. R. R. Tolkien was, in the words of his biographer John Garth, "effusive about philology"; his schoolfriend Rob Gilson called him "quite a great authority on etymology".

This device of rendering an imaginary language with a real one was carried further by rendering:[1] The whole device of linguistic mapping was essentially a fix for the problems Tolkien had created for himself by using real Norse names for the Dwarves in The Hobbit, rather than inventing new names in Khuzdul, the language of the Dwarves.

[T 3]He explains further that: the Númenóreans had maintained ... havens upon the western coasts of Middle-earth for the help of their ships; and one of the chief of these was at Pelargir near the Mouths of Anduin.

There Adûnaic was spoken, and mingled with many words of the languages of lesser men it became a Common Speech that spread thence along the coasts among all that had dealings with Westernesse.

[T 3] He explains, too, that Sam[wise] and Ham[fast] "were really called Ban and Ran", shortened from Westron Banazîr and Ranugad.

[T 3] Nick Groom states that Sûza, Banazîr, and the Westron for Sam's surname "Gamgee", Galbasi, are all derived from Gothic, a precursor of Old English, adding a further layer of linguistic complexity to the pseudotranslation.

[10] The word Hobbit, which Tolkien's fictional persona, the narrator of the appendices, admits "is an invention", could, he explains, easily be a much-worn form of the Old English holbytla, "hole-dweller".