Just thought I'd share this in case some people here didn't know:

The Lord of the Rings Family Tree Project

Some people go beyond crazy and come out genius on the other side...

/wolf

You're right GW69 .... that's a crazy piece of work!
Hmmm, with due respect to the author though - I wonder .... are ALL those Hobbits actually canon?
What's with the made-up characters (eg: Ingil, son of Ingwe)? For what purpose were these additional personae created??

I have no idea. I'm not involved in the Project and not Tolkien-Buff enough to venture a guess or even identify the "non-canon" stuff.

I'm just an ignorant fan. :-) i.e. too stupid to know better...

/wolf

Cheesewyrm,

I took a quick glance at it and I didn't note anyone who wasn't vaguely familiar. I think the Appendix has lots of Hobbits that don't exist elsewhere. There might be more in the HoMe as well although I haven't read that so it's a guess on my part.


Apparently Ingil is a very minor character who might have later been edited out of existence. Or at least relevance. He doesn't appear to have his own entry as yet.

Tokien Gateway: Telimektar

An excellent project. A thorough analysis of the corpus and clear differentiation as to the "canonicity" of the characters.

A pleasure to browse through or study

Cheers
Tolwen

Awesome Garn, ta for pointing me in the right direction.
I thought I was fairly buff with my Tolkien-Lore .... but I wasn't aware of The Tolkien Gateway until now .... so now I shall take myself outside and have a stern word with myself!
Many years have passed since I read Tolkien's creation notes (Lost Tales & other History of M-E volumes) so methinks it be time to return to them and find out more about Ingil and the Hobbit-hordes, as I don't recall them from the Hobbit, LotR, Silmarillion, UnfTales.
For now I must remove my M-E Geek badge!

Tolwen, would you please inform me which Tolkien works are generally accepted as canon? My impression is that you're a Tolkien-scholar, and thus qualified to advise.

Hi CheeseWyrm,

Well, first thanks for the "scholar" attribute

The definition is not entirely clear or undisputed, but AFAIK the most common use is with the following definition: All the Middle-earth related works that J.R.R. published in his lifetime (essentially The Hobit and The Lord of the Rings) are core canon. Hereby, LotR is attributed the seniority with regard to the "serious" Middle-earth matters. This is mostly due to the Hobbit's origin as not intended for Tolkien's beloved Silmarillion-world myth.

When you go beyond this absolute minimum canon, things begin to get complicated. Often it is defined along the following principles:

• Compatibility with the LotR-canon
• Date of creation (e.g. Lost Tales versions are of lesser canonicity than Quenta Silmarillion ones for example)

Here the Sil77 (The Silmarillion as published), UT (Unfinished Tales), the HoMe (History of Middle-earth in 12 volumes), the Letters and other posthumous texts (e.g. in Vinyar Tengwar) must be weighed according to the standards used.

So, it's no a clearly-defined and unmistakeable matter, even though there are some often-used terms

Cheers
Tolwen