and where was he born?

John D. Rateliff, an excellent scholar who doesn't usually trip up like this, has again trotted out his favorite bugaboo: objecting to statements in books about Tolkien that say his birth in 1892 was in South Africa. What he was born in, John explains, was Bloemfontein, capital of the Orange Free State, one of the Boer Republics.

This last sentence is true, but the argument is likely to confuse the casual reader. What Tolkien wasn't born in was the Republic of South Africa, which (as the Union of South Africa) wasn't established as a governmental entity until 1910. Before 1900-02, when it was captured by the British, the Orange Free State was indeed an independent republic. After 1910, Bloemfontein was in both the country of South Africa and the Orange Free State, now a province thereof, until the latter was dissolved in 1994.

Saying that Tolkien wasn't born in the Republic of South Africa is like saying that George Washington wasn't born in the United States: both true and misleading, but more misleading than true.

Emphasizing Tolkien's birth as being in a Boer Republic is even more misleading, because Tolkien wasn't a Boer, nor even of long-resident British stock. His parents were both very recent immigrants from Birmingham in central England, and they'd moved to Bloemfontein in pursuance of his father's banking career.

But regardless of whether it is useful to deny that Tolkien was born in the Republic of South Africa, it is not true to deny that Tolkien was born in South Africa. "South Africa," as a geographical expression with a capital S, was in common use long before Tolkien was born. (Example: Compendium of the History and Geography of South Africa (spelled that way in the text) by George McCall Theal, 3rd ed., 1878.)

What anybody hardly ever writes is "south Africa" with a small s, which is John's suggestion. Somewhat more common today is "southern Africa," which more neatly distinguishes the geographic region from the nation, but even that is more often seen with a capital S. People write "West Africa," with a capital W, all the time, even though there's never been a country by that name (unless you count the colonial federations of French West Africa and British West Africa). Hardly anyone writes "west Africa" with a small w.

All this can easily be verified by the Google Ngram Viewer, which is case-sensitive unless you turn that function off.

Tolkien was born in South Africa. It is legitimate and accurate to say that.

This has been another lesson in, Don't correct people if you're not correct yourself.

when to toast Tolkien

Friday was the anniversary of JRR Tolkien's birthday. He was born 1892, so that makes him 133.

The Tolkien Society suggests that everyone raise a glass and make the toast "The Professor" at 9 pm local time. But that doesn't stop them from holding an online gathering with the toast at 9 pm UK time and inviting members worldwide to attend. That makes it 1 pm my time, and I've attended it in the past. The Society chair reads a passage, the toast is made, and then the very large attendance is sorted into breakout groups to chat.

But this year I did something different. I'm on the mailing list for a US-based Inklings discussion group which meets online Fridays, also at 1 pm my time, and which took advantage of the coincidence to celebrate Tolkien's birthday by holding the toast at 2 pm and, it being a much smaller group, giving everybody in it a chance to read a favorite passage of Tolkien. Some prose passages mostly from The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings - one person's choice of Bilbo and the spiders inspired someone else to pick Shelob's Lair, despite someone else confessing to finding all the spider passages horribly creepy - and a lot of poems, including "Mythopoeia," part of "The Fall of Arthur," and my choice, an obscure 1920s poem called "The Nameless Land," my favorite Tolkien poem. It's in the collection The Lost Road as well as the new Collected Poems.

Marcel Bülles aka The Tolkienist, a friend of mine in these circles, wants people honoring Tolkien's birthday to promote his e-mail newsletter, "The Roving Ranger." I'm not sure how to get this other than to pay for a subscription to his blog at Steady, which is another service like Substack, because that seems to be why I'm getting it, but there it is. Marcel also has a website where it appears the material from his newsletter will eventually end up. Anyway, it has lots of material interesting and enticing to other Tolkienists, which is why I signed up.

end of the holidays

Thursday was the end of the holiday season in our house. I dug out the last congealed fragments of wax from the Hanukkah menorah and put it away. B. took down the ornaments from our artificial Christmas tree, and I took the tree apart and packed it away. Then I moved the old rocking chair back into its position in the living room, and spread out the sheepskin and other pieces of fabric that Maia likes to sit on to their accustomed places, which should make for a slightly less disgruntled cat.

The first business day of the year is also when I traditionally take my car in for its annual servicing, which costs much money and takes several hours (spent reading and checking email on my ipad) but revealed nothing urgently bad. It also made it easy to stop in on the way home at the supermarket nearby which has the best fresh crab cakes, so that was dinner along with some sauteed asparagus.

what the Heinlein?

Suddenly, on this first day of 2025, I am finding allusions in my reading to Robert A. Heinlein.

One is this anecdote from Mark Evanier, in which Mark tells of the time in 1984 that he found himself assigned at a comics convention to moderate a panel on Heinlein. Only problem was that Mark had never read any Heinlein, and then, it turned out, neither had any of the panelists, who'd been assigned as blithely as he had, nor any of the audience, who were there mostly out of curiosity as to who this Heinlein was.
And that, I guess, shows a difference between comics conventions and science-fiction conventions. Today would be different, but in 1984 you could have staffed a pretty good and discursive, probably even contentious, panel on Heinlein at an SF con by just grabbing half a dozen random people from the hallway. Because even if they didn't know his work well, they'd have had opinions.

The other is Kevin Drum's 20 favorite books of all time, which includes Time Enough for Love (or, as I like to call it, Time for Enough Love). Oh, is it really? Not just your favorite Heinlein - personally I'd only feel easy about anyone's choice for that honor if it was published before about 1960 - but one of your favorite books of all time? Many of the other choices left me equally gobsmacked - Stephen R. Donaldson, oh god - and all I can say is, people sure are different.