Onomastic discrepancies between 'The Hobbit or There and Back Again' and its film adaptation

Abstract

Seventy-five years after the novel The Hobbit was published, the first part of its film adaptation, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, appeared in cinemas. The film trilogy (the second and third parts entitled The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, and The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies respectively) differs from the novel in a number of aspects, one of which is its onomastic stratum. The main aim of this article is to analyse the functions served by the characters’ proper names in the novel and in the film trilogy and to compare these functions. The examination is based on the naming act in the novel, on the basis of which eight relations a name can enter into and thirteen roles it can serve have been identified.