Maybe Tolkien himself never realized this...

[fpb]

...but the Pope has a famous and beautiful summer residence in the gorgeous little town of Castel Gandolfo. Which, Englished, gives Gandalf's Castle. (The creator of Gandalf, of course, was very Catholic indeed.)

Comments

[chthonya]

Interesting!

There could be seeds of an interesting fanfic in there, though it would take someone more steeped in Tolkien's worlds than I to write it.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Alas, the historical origin of the name is too well attested to indulge in fanfic. It took the name Gandolfo when it was - for a while - the property of a family called the Gandolphi, who originally came from Genoa. It was a Longobard name, like many ancient Italian names. (Even Dante ALIGHIERI = same as the common German surname ALDINGHER.) The name Gandalf and variations, like all of Tolkien's names (Frodo, for instance, is the Englishing of Fruote, an epic hero from the German epic Kudrun), was an actual Germanic name ("Elf with a wand", implying a protective spirit) and turns up both in mythology and in history. Gandolfo has had its ending assimilated to the common Germanic ending -wolf, (which in Italian gives Astolfo, Adolfo, Rodolfo, etc.), but "wolf with a wand" would make no sense, so I assume it to have been the same as the well-attested Gandalf.