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From: "Lenderink, dr. E." <lenderin@natlab.research.philips.com>
Subject: Re: Meaning of name
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Date: Wed, 2 Jul 1997 08:22:04 GMT
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Daniel von Brighoff wrote:
> 
> In article <5p8su5$ku8@nntp6.u.washington.edu>,
> Halldor Arnason <harnason@u.washington.edu> wrote:
> >burkey@SPAMSLAYERiquest.net writes:
> >
> >>If someone here can help me, I'd appreciate it.
> >
> >>I need to know the meaning of the name "Dain"; it's
> >>from Old Norse/Icelandic I think.
> >
> >It doesn't look very Icelandic to me, though there is the Icelandic word
> >din meaining dead.  I really can't see that as a name.
> 
> Isn't it the name of a dvergr in the Elder Edda?  I seem to remember it
> from the famous passage whence Tolkien cribbed the names of the Dwarves
> for _The Hobbit_.
>

Yes, the name does occur in one of the Edda poems, but not in the long 
row of dvergar in the Vlusp DvB is obviously referring to.
(At least not in the copy that is on my bookshelf; one has to be careful, 
as there seem to be more versions hanging around. Mine is a 1987 edition 
edited by Gsli Sigursson, according to the preface entirely based on 
the Codex Regius version, though spelling has been modernized.)

The name Dinn occurs once in the Hvaml, in the bit about the origin of 
the runes. Here, Dinn is the one who received the art of carving runes 
for the lfar, not for the dvergar. I suppose that means he is considered 
to be an lfur as well.
In a recent Dutch translation of the Edda Poems, the name Dinn is 
translated as "De Dode" (The Dead One), which agrees with what Halldr 
wrote.

The Tolkien hunch of DvB is correct: Dain [sic] is one of the dwarves in 
The Hobbit. Not one of Bilbo's traveling companions, but the dwarf-lord 
of the Iron Hills that comes to their aid in the Battle of Five Armies, 
and the one to become King under the Mountain after Thorin's death.

Egbert.

(For those of you with character maps that disagree with mine:
 = a with acute accent
 = cross-barred d (eth)
 = i with acute accent
 = o with acute accent
 = o with two dots over it
For all those Scandinavian flamers:
interpret the = sign as "should look like". Of course I know that the  
and the a are two vastly completely extremely different letters, and so 
on, as you told us in a flood of previous messages)

-- 

This message reflects my personal opinions only, not those of the company
I work for.
