Talk:East Road

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Names of the road

Great East Road: unless the name appears in The History of Middle-earth it doesn't appear anywhere. In The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, or in The Hobbit it doesn't appear; in The Lord of the Rings there is only one mention of "the great East Road" where the G in the word "great" is not capitalized, thus not part of the name: "Northward, where they looked most hopefully, they could see nothing that might be the line of the great East Road, for which they were making." (The Fellowship of the Ring, ch. 6 "The Old Forest"). --Tik 14:59, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

I checked The History of Middle-earth and it isn't there either, prefers "East Road" as the primary reference. I have changed all appropriate references throughout this wiki to "East Road"; I think "Great East Road" is fanon. --Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 18:49, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

On the same note, Great Road seems to be never used in reference to this road. "Great Road" is mentioned in UT, but refers to North- South Road. Olthar 22:09, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

It is mentioned as "Great Road" once in the Appendix A. Sage 08:51, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Names in the narrative and appendix of LOTR

The capitalized name "East Road" is used ten times (including one use of "great East Road" in the chapters A Conspiracy Unmasked, The Old Forest and In the House of Tom Bombadil, At the Sign of the Prancing Pony, Strider, Homeward Bound, The Scouring of the Shire and The Grey Havens. J.R.R. Tolkien wrote in his entry for "East Road" "the great ancient road from the Grey Havens to Rivendell, called by Hobbits the East Road (or great East Road from Brandywine Bridge eastwards)". J.R.R. Tolkien wrote in his entry for Forsaken Inn about its location "where the East Road approached the old borders of Bree Land". He also used "East Road" in his entry for Waymeet in his Unfinished Index The capitalized name "Old Road" is used twice in the chapter A Knife in the Dark. J.R.R. Tolkien wrote in his entry for Old Road in his Unfinished Index for LOTR that this "refers to the great East Road". The uncapitalized term "great East Road" is used once in The Lord of the Rings in the chapter "The Old Forest". The uncapitalized name "great road" is used once in the narrative of The Lord of the Rings in the chapter Three is Company. The capitalized name "Great Road" is used four times in the section (I) (iii) Eriador, Arnor, and the Heirs of Isildur of Appendix A. The name East-West Road is used once in the chapter The Shadow of the Past.

Name in the narrative of UT

J.R.R. Tolkien used the capitalized term "East Road" once in version (i) of thd chapter The Hunt for the Ring in Unfinished Tales. J.R.R. Tolkien used the capitalized name East-West Road once in note 6 of the chapter The Disaster of the Gladden Fiels in Unfinished Tales.

Names on maps written by J.R.R. Tolkien or Christopher Tolkien

J.R.R. Tolkien used the label "Great East Road" on the map for the road between Bree and the river Hoarwell with no other labels for this road on The Third Map of The Lord of the Rings. Christopher Tolkien used the label "Great East Road" for the road between Bree and the river Hoarwell with no other labels for this road on his General Map of Middle-earth that was published with earlier editions/printings of LOTR. Christopher Tolkien used the label "East-West Road" for the road between Bree and the river Hoarwell with no other labels for this road on his The West of Middle-earth at the End of the Third Age map that was published with UT and with later editions of LOTR. J.R.R. Tolkien used the label "East Road" above the road north of the Old Forest with no other labels for this road on his map of the Shire. Christopher Tolkien used the label "The EAST ROAD" above the road north of Tuckborough and above the road north of the Old Forest.

Criteria of the Tolkien Gateway Naming policy

• Recognisability East Road is more recognisable than East-West Road, because East Road is the most often used name in the narrative, where East-West Road is used only once and East-West Road is only used on one of the later maps that was not drawn by J.R.R Tolkien, but by his son Christopher Tolkien and some people may not even have a book where this map is used.
• Consiseness East Road is shorter than East-West Road.
• Naturalness Someone is more likely to search for East Road (because it is used more often and can be remembered more easily) then East-West Road (used less often and only on one of the maps).
• Precision The name East Road is not used in the narrative of the published version of The Silmarillion for the different road in Belerliand and not used on the map that accompanies this book. The name East Road is only used in the chapter Of Tuor and his coming to Gondolin in UT in the narrative. This could be addressed by a disambiguation notice at the beginning of the East Rode page (the one in Eriador) that mentions a link to an East Road (Beleriand) page. Due to the East Road not being used very often for the one in Beleriand, people who enter East Road in the search box are more likely to search for the East Road in Eriador. Having an East Road page that is only a disambiguation page with links to East Road (Eriador) and East Road (Beleriand) and no other content would require another click for persions who look for the East Road in Eriador when they enter the search term East Road. With the disambiguation notice at the top of an East Road page (for the one in Eriador), people looking for the East Road in Beleriand would only need to make one click (which they would also need to make on a pure disambiguation page) to get to an East Road page about the one in Beleriand.
• Canonicity J.R.R. Tolkien used the term East Road most ofen in the narrative, he made an entry for East Road in his Unfinished Index and he used it in other entries in his Unfinished Index for LOTR.

Conclusion

From a purely quantitative point of view the name "East Road" is used most often in the narrative. My subjective view is that East Road probably is the best remembered term by readers and fits the recognizability criterion of the naming policy for the names of pages on Tolkien Gateway best. For readers who look at the maps a lot it depends which map that was drawn by whom they use, but redirect pages will help to find the right page. --Akhôrahil (talk) 11:44, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

--Akhôrahil (talk) 09:28, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

I think it's basically between "East Road" and "East-West Road".

In-universe, it seems that East Road is used by Hobbits, while East-West road is the "official" old name. So for example, Nature of Middle-Earth only mentions "East-West Road of Arnor", and UT uses East Road when talking about hobbits, and East-West Road otherwise.

The advantage with East-West Road is that it's unambiguous. East Road could refer to a road anywhere (even though it only ever refers to this one). And in the 50th anniversary ed. of LotR, East Road is indexed under East-West Road. Just by gut, it feels right to call it "the East-West Road, also known as the East Road."

On the other hand, LotR is a story about Hobbits. Only nerds read UT, and for 95% of people, the East Road will basically just be the East Road.

I still lean towards "East-West Road".

Starting the article "The East-West Road, also known as the East Road among Hobbits, [...]" is fairly clear, I think. NotJesper (talk) 16:48, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

I agree that it should be the East-West Road.Dour1234 (talk) 20:05, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

Edits or proposals to make edits or agreements should not be made based on gut feelings or what something feels right or by aruging what something seems without disclosing which exhaustive analysis supports a conclusion. Have you searched for all instances where the name East Road is used in the narrative of LOTR and analyzed which person uses the name? In the chapter Strider, Strider (i.e. Aragorn II who is not a Hobbit, but a Dúnadan of the north) uses the name East Road ("I have been watching the East Road anxiously."), so the name East Road is not only used by Hobbits. Have you analyzed which of the critera of the Tolkien Gateway Naming policy the names East Road or East-West Road fit better? --Akhôrahil (talk) 09:28, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

History of the road

There is some speculative content that the East Road was built by the dwarves and when it was built. The only reference that I could find was the statement by Gandalf about Thorin's view about Hobbits "As far as he was concerned they were just food-growers who happened to work the fields on either side of the Dwarves’ ancestral road to the Mountains." in typescript B of the earlier version in the appendix of the chapter The Quest of Erebor in Unfinished Tales. How can this statement by interpreted according to normal variations of the use of the adjective "ancestral" in the English language and shouldn't it be overinterpreted since it comes from an earlier version of an unfinished text? In my opinion it does not clearly state that the Dwarves built the East Road and certainly does not say when they built it, but it could also be interpretated that generations of Dwarves before Thorin had already used the road to get to the Blue Mountains (or the Misty Mountains), but not necessarily constructed it. In note 6 of the chapter The Disaster of the Gladden Fields J.R.R. Tolkien mentions that the only two "Númenorean Roads" in Isildur's time were the East-West Road and the Noth-South Road. This could imply that the East Road was built by the Númenoreans. Maybe there was a path or a track before that had already been used by Dwarves before the settlement by Númenorean colonists. --Akhôrahil (talk) 11:44, 29 January 2024 (UTC)