Wikipedia entries about Tolkien and related topics have been making reference to my research for some time. I can’t remember when I first discovered this … Okay, I just hunted it down, and it was in September 2008. I admit it was a bit of a thrill to see this for the first time, but I stopped keeping an eye out for it after a while. As of this writing, more than 60 entries on Wikipedia make reference to me, and not all of them in English. I didn’t realize it was that many until just now; I should definitely take a closer look. It’s nice to see that people are reading my work, remembering it, referencing it, and recommending it, directly or indirectly. Part of the reason my first book is still in print and still selling.
What brings me here today is the Wikipedia entry for Nazgûl, which includes a pretty substantial
reference — the better part of 400 words — to my linguistic analysis of “wraith”,
“nazgûl”, “writhe”, “ring”, and other connected words. It’s an accurate,
relevant, and well-written summary of (a small part of) what I published in my 2014
essay, “Tolkien’s Wraiths, Rings, and Dragons: An Exercise in Literary
Linguistics”. That essay grew out of a conference paper I delivered in Connecticut
in 2008, which in turn evolved from a series of investigations I published here
on this blog over the course of 2007 — nearing twenty years ago now! Could time
be any stranger?
A Wikipedia contributor called “Chiswick Chap” added the “Etymological
connotations” section to the Nazgûl entry on June 25, 2023, originally just a
single short paragraph early in the day, then edited and expanded multiple
times over the course of the same day and into the next to take the bulk of the
form it has today. The same contributor created and added a diagram as part of a
flurry of edits over the summer and fall of 2024, with the diagram’s first
appearance coming on September 21, 2024.
The diagram (shown at the bottom of the post) is a remarkable visualization of some of the
linguistic connections I made, organizing words and cognate forms from various
languages into a series of overlapping ellipses, a bit like a multivariable Venn
diagram. I find this especially elegant because it’s not only an accurate representation
of how these words relate to each other — which tells me I did well at conveying
those relationships, and Chiswick Chap did well at comprehending them; neither to
be assumed! — but the ellipses also beautifully echo the circles, rings, and
circular connections at the heart of the analysis. Like two stones dropped into a pond, each sending out overlapping ripples. Chiswick Chap even puts an image
of the One Ring at the top of the diagram, shown at an angle that makes it
elliptical also. I love it.
As a short digression, something you wouldn’t have seen if
you’ve only read my published essay is the PowerPoint presentation I built to accompany
the conference paper, which included a variety of animated and, to be honest,
wildly over-engineered diagrams to visualize these words and their
interrelationships. Here’s a taste:
It’s something I hadn’t done before, didn’t need to do then, and haven’t done since. It was fun, but not at all necessary. Still, one could almost wonder whether Chiswick Chap had seen this presentation, given the type of diagram he eventually constructed. But no, I’m sure that’s not the case. (Another small side note. I’ve been inclined toward this type of diagram before, though not animated in PowerPoint. In college, I produced complex diagrams like this to accompany papers I wrote on Poe, Hemingway, and Brontë, among others. No wonder Chiswick Chap’s diagram appeals to me so much!)
So, who is this Chiswick Chap? Well, someone from Chiswick, I
presumed, a district in West London. Also, I guessed he’s a man; are women ever
called “chap” in colloquial British English the way Americans can call women “dude”
or Australians call women “mate”? I don’t think so. He’s a prolific contributor
to Wikipedia, not just in matters of Tolkien, but also Agriculture, Animals,
Artists, Biology, Cookery, Culture, Chiswick (duh), Forestry, History and philosophy
of science, Natural history, Scandinavia, Beowulf, Victoriana, Yoga, and other subjects
besides. Some of these have obvious overlaps with Tolkien; others, not so much.
He’s also created hundreds of diagrams for Wikipedia.
On the matter of Tolkien in particular, Chiswick Chap has
been busy, writing more than 100 entries and improving more than 200 others relating
to Tolkien! Describing his own work here on his Wikipedia landing page,
he writes:
This [i.e., Tolkien on Wikipedia] didn’t look like a dark corner, as it had been extensively and lovingly attended … by fans. Suffice it to say that a lot of the old articles are now a great deal better-cited, while the unciteable ones aren’t around any more. At least 137 new (*) articles (including half-a-dozen phoenixes) and over 250 GAs and FAs, not counting the 4 Tolkien/Beowulf ones. The old articles were basically all in-universe; the new ones are thematic and analytic, summarizing a now-vast body of international Tolkien scholarship. There’s a write-up of it all in Mythlore, for anyone of a scholarly bent. [2]
So, a reference to something in Mythlore! And the essay in question reveals Chiswick Chap’s
identity! “Weaving Wikipedia’s Middle-earth Web” by Ian F. Alexander, published
in the April 2025 issue. Now,
one might think I’d’ve read this over a year ago, eh? The issue did catch my
eye when it was announced. Searching back, I see I flagged the announcement in
my email, and I also find that I wrote to the Mythopoeic Society’s listserv at
the time:
The upcoming essay on Alan Garner’s Elidor really caught my eye! Nowadays it’s an almost forgotten book, but it was a favorite of mine at one time. I’ll have to read it again. The piece about Wikipedia and Middle-earth also sounds like it could be really interesting. And the new essay from Eric Reinders. Saw him at Mythcon last year and was impressed with his work. Lots of good stuff coming! Thanks as always to you, Janet, and to all the contributors! [April 10, 2025, emphasis added]
But in spite of noticing the essay and intending to read it,
I didn’t. I should have, but it evidently slipped my mind, as more and more things
do nowadays. Even if I had, it doesn’t mean I would have discovered the Nazgûl
entry a year ago.
Well, I’ve read it now. In the short piece, Alexander argues
that Wikipedia serves as a valuable bridge between Tolkien scholarship and the
general public by creating a large, interconnected network of well-sourced
articles on Middle-earth that combine accessible explanation with scholarly
references — exactly the kind of balance I always hope to achieve in my work.
Too many writings on Tolkien are one or the other — accessible or scholarly, not both. He also summarizes
his many contributions and provides interesting insights into how contributing
to Wikipedia works, statistics on popular Tolkien topics in Wikipedia, and
more.
The scope and quality of Alexander’s contributions to the
treatment of Tolkien in Wikipedia are, frankly, pretty staggering! I know, I
know: I’m coming to this late, and — tellingly, I guess — through ego surfing.
I only discovered the Nazgûl reference because the entry had been edited again,
trivially, in the last month. But better late than never, and better
circuitously than not at all. I like to think I know or know of most of the
people who are really actively involved in the Tolkien community, but I don’t
think I’ve ever crossed paths with Ian Alexander. I’d like to. Thank you for
your service to the community, sir!
For posterity — Wikipedia entries have a tendency to evolve,
and the internet is an ephemeral thing — here are the relevant section and
diagram as they look today:
[1] Fisher, Jason. “Tolkien’s Wraiths, Rings, and Dragons: An Exercise in Literary Linguistics”. In Houghton, John Wm., Croft, Janet Brennan, Martsch, N., et al., eds. Tolkien in the New Century: Essays in Honor of Tom Shippey. McFarland, 2014, pp. 97–114.
[2] GAs are Good Articles, and FAs are Featured Articles. I don’t think “phoenix” is an official term in the parlance of Wikipedia contributors, but I take it to refer to a Wikipedia entry that died for lack of quality or interest, was eventually deleted, but then recreated and resurrected better than before.
