Oh damn, have I been fooled? Isn’t this what people dunk on JK Rowling for?
to be fair, this is exaggerated in the meme - Theodead is actually Theodred (turning “dred” into “dead” is a bit tortured), and Orctank is really Orthanc (which again required some extra work to make the joke).
The only really egregious one is Grima Wormtongue, except even that one isn’t so bad, since Wormtongue is explicitly supposed to be a nickname given to the guy, not what he actually calls himself (although Grima itself can actually mean “mask” or “apparition”, but you’d need to be a linguistics nerd to know that). Saruman sounding kind of close to Sauron is maybe a bit confusing, but I feel like the closeness of the two names is somewhat exaggerated.
Wormtongue was literally a nickname given by those who hated him, neither himself nor Theoden used it.
I figured that since Tolkien was a linguistics guy that he used some roots where those things more directly translated, like ‘-dred’ means ‘dead’ and ‘-thanc’ means pit or enclosure of some sort. Oh wow, imagine if JK Rowling was a linguistics nut, she probably would hide some (more) heinous things in names.
I think sauron is pronounced more like Sour-on and saruman is more like sore-oo-mon
They sound more different than they look is my point
To be fair this is what most of fantasy does, even back when it was mythology…for example “-mor-” names, probably referring to French or Latin for “death:” Mordred, Mordor, Morgorth, Moria, some others from other franchises I can’t remember
If it was English instead of Latin roots, yeah, this is what it would sound like
