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Tolkien Forever
Gondor
Apr 27 2008, 6:54pm
Post #1 of 14
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Uruks Versus Uruk-Hai
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It Seems Like An Appropriate Time to Start This Thread......
I'm sure this must've come up; I mentioned it the other day......
This was a major discussion on another site, a scholarly discussion, not a metaphorical one that went on for 48 pages - a bit much, but bears some merit.
The gist of it is that Tolkien makes a distinction in calling 'Uruks' & Uruk-Hai' in every case he mentions one or the other but one I believe.
I've copied the opening post from there & pasted it here:
A week or two back, in a long thread on the movie forum, there was considerable discussion over the use of the terms Uruk vs. Uruk-hai in LOTR. A number of us contended that the terms have different meanings, while others said they were interchangeable. A number of quotes from the book were given. Since them I have spent some time looking through LOTR to find any additional instances I could of the use of the two terms. Following are all the instances I could find, including those already found:
1) In the chapter The Uruk-hai in The Two Towers, Ugluk says: "We are the fighting Uruk-hai! We slew the great warrior. We took the prisoners. We are the servants of Saruman the Wise, the White Hand: the Hand that gives us man's-flesh to eat. We came out of Isengard, and led you here ..... "
2) Later in the same chapter, Ugluk again speaking: "Leave them to me then! No killing, as I've told you before; but if you want to throw away what we've come all the way to get, throw it away! I'll look after it. Letting the fighting Uruk-hai do the work, as usual. ..... "
3) On the next page, Ugluk again: "You seem to know a lot. ... More than is good for you I guess. Perhaps those in Lugburz might wonder how, and why. But in the meantime the Uruk-hai of Isengard can do the dirty work, as usual. ...."
4) This is not exactly a quote, but in The Two Towers, Tolkien titles his chapter "The Uruk-hai", he does not call it "The Uruks".
5) In The Two Towers in the chapter Helm's Deep, as Aragorn looks out for the dawn there is the following passage:
"The Orcs yelled and jeered. 'Come down! Come down!' they cried. 'If you wish to speak to us, come down! Bring out your king! We are the fighting Uruk-hai. We will fetch him from his hole, if he does not come down. Bring out your skulking king!'
" 'The king stays or comes at his own will,' said Aragorn.
" 'Then what are you doing here?' they answered. 'Why do you look out? Do you wish to see the greatness of our army? We are the fighting Uruk-hai.'
" 'I looked out to see the dawn,' said Aragorn.
" 'What of the dawn?' they jeered. 'We are the Uruk-hai: we do not stop the fight for night or day, for fair weather or for storm. .... "
6) In The Return of the King, in the chapter The Seige of Gondor there is the following sentence: "No hours so dark had Pippin known, not even in the clutches of the Uruk-hai."
7) In The Return of the King, in the chapter The Land of Shadow, Sam and Frodo overhear two orcs talking and one says: ".... First they say it's a great Elf in bright armour, then it's a sort of small dwarf-man, then it must be a pack of rebel Uruk-hai; or maybe it's all the lot together."
8) In The Fellowship of the Ring, in the chapter The Bridge of Khazad-dum, Gandalf says: "There are Orcs, very many of them .... And some are large and evil: black Uruks of Mordor. ...."
9) In The Two Towers, in the chapter The Choices of Master Samwise, Gorbag says: " .... I say something has slipped. And we've got to look out. Always the poor Uruks to put slips right, and small thanks. ....."
10) In The Return of the King, in the chapter The Land of the Shadow, Sam and Frodo are overtaken on the road by troops of orcs and there is the following description of the troops: "Beside them, running up and down the line, went two of the large fierce Uruks, cracking lashes and shouting."
11) In The Return of the King, in Appendix A it says: "In the last years of Denethor I the race of Uruks, black orcs of great strength, first appeared out of Mordor, and in 2475 they swept across Ithilien and took Osgiliath."
12) In The Return of the King, in Appendix F it says: "Related. no doubt, was the word uruk of the Black Speech, though this was applied as a rule only to the great soldier-orcs that at this time issued from Mordor and Isengard. The lesser kinds were called, especially by the Uruk-hai, snaga 'slave'." (Italics in the original.)
In examples 1 to 6, the term Uruk-hai is clearly referring to Saruman's orc troops. In examples 8 to 11, the term Uruks (sometimes spelled with a lower case "u") is clearly referring to Sauron's troops. We are left with examples 7 and 12. Example 7 is ambiguous since Sauron's orc could be referring to orcs in the employ of Saruman, who he might well consider rebels. Example 12 is the only case where Tolkien uses the two terms in close proximity and it seems to me to be ambiguous. The first sentence clearly refers makes uruk refer to Mordor orcs as in examples 8 to 11, but the second sentence use of Uruk-hai does not automatically make the two terms equivalent and I find it interesting that Tolkien captilizes Uruk-hai as if it is a specifc name, but does not do the same with uruk. Thus, it seems to me clear that uruk and Uruk-hai are used quite differently by Tolkien in LOTR with uruk referring to Sauron's large, soldier orcs and Uruk-hai referring to Saruman's large, soldier, daylight-tolerant orcs.
Cian and other forum members pointed out the Index entry (by Christopher Tolkien) in Unfinished Tales that says: "Uruks -- Anglicized form of Uruk-hai of the Black Speech." This entry specifcally refers to the account "The Battles of the Fords of Isen" in Unfinished Tales in which Tolkien repeatedly uses the term Uruks when he is talking about Saruman's troops fighting with the troops of Rohan. This seems to be the only time where Tolkien uses the term uruk for Saruman's orc troops. However, this is a draft piece which Tolkien did not use in LOTR and hence can be assumed to not be in a final form.
Cian also posted many examples of third party "Tolkien scholars" repeating the definition of uruk as being an Anglicized form of Uruk-hai. I have come across references which claim that Uruk-hai is a plural form of Uruk, which clearly does not fit Tolkien's usage since he uses both uruk and Uruks.
My question after all this is the following: Does anyone have any evidence from Tolkien, himself to support the interpretation that has been advanced by the various "Tolkien scholars". I have been able to find nothing in Tolkien's own hand to support the "scholar's" interpretation, with the exception of the account in Unfinished Tales, which is a unused draft and thus cannot be used against Tolkien's published words in LOTR.
Back to me......
My take is that there is indeed a difference between 'Uruks' & Uruk-Hai'.
'Uruks' first appears in 2475 coming out of Mordor & the name appears once or twice later in The Tale of Years.
'Uruk-Hai' appears to refer to Saruman's especially bred troops that are said to be men that are 'more than half goblin' & speculated by Treebeard that Saruman has bred the race of men & orcs. These orcs must be the 'black Uruks of Mordor' to begin with, interbred with men.
This would give them the extra ability to withstand the sun.
I know that most Tolkien Encyclopedias & Robert Foster's Complete Guide (at least an old version) don't make a distinction, but that's probably due to not wanting to get into this amount of detail that I just provided - not to mention the 48 page discussion that might follow, so they take the easy way out, based on a word interpretation, not on the textutual information that Tolkien actually provides to back the two terms up......
I must agree with the above post: There is a difference between the two & 'Tolkien Scholars' are taking the easy way out......
What do you folks think about it?
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Curious
Half-elven
Apr 27 2008, 7:17pm
Post #2 of 14
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In the text of LotR Tolkien generally used Uruk-hai to refer to Saruman's orcs and Uruks to refer to the large orcs from Mordor. Both appear to be plural forms of Uruk, with Uruks being the Anglicized plural. The two races of super-orcs were developed separately, as we learn in Morgoth's Ring. Saruman developed his orcs by cross-breeding with men several hundred years after Sauron had done the same. So yes, Tolkien makes a distinction between Saruman's Uruk-hai and Sauron's Uruks. And that distinction is about more than just a choice of plural forms.
And yes, Uruks is an Anglicized version of Uruk-hai, which comes from the Black Speech. Thus when a new race of trolls appeared out of Mordor they were called the Olog-hai -- and they had nothing whatsoever to do with Saruman. Judge for yourself:
"But at the end of the Third Age a troll-race not before seen appeared in southern Mirkwood and in the mountain borders of Mordor. Olog-hai they were called in the Black Speech. That Sauron bred them none doubted, though from what stock was not known. Some held that they were not Trolls but giant Orcs; but the Olog-hai were in fashion of body and mind quite unlike even the largest of Orc-kind, whom they far surpassed in size and power. Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race, strong, agile, fierce and cunning, but harder than stone. Unlike the older race of the Twilight they could endure the Sun, so long as the will of Sauron held sway over them. They spoke little, and the only tongue that they knew was the Black Speech of Barad-dūr."
From LotR, Appendix F. So everyone is right, right?
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N.E. Brigand
Half-elven
Apr 27 2008, 7:17pm
Post #3 of 14
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First: just as anyone posting to these boards would deserve to be properly acknowledged if their comments here were quoted elsewhere, I'd like to note that the post you copied for this discussion was by one "Greenwood" and originally found here.
Second: forty-eight pages of discussion, dating back six years! Any chance you could summarize the arguments in a few paragraphs for us, TF? 
Third: what do you make of the reference, on the very last page of that discussion, to Tolkien's notes on the names in LotR that were published last year in Parma Eldalamberon 17, where he writes simply that "uruk-hai" means "orc folk"?
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Join us Apr. 21-27 for "The Uruk-hai".
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squire
Half-elven
Apr 27 2008, 8:59pm
Post #4 of 14
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What is the collective singular of urīk?
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I have always taken uruk to mean, as Tolkien says in the Appendices, any large fighting orc of the kind that form the core of Sauron's and Saruman's soldiery. Meanwhile, Uruk-hai, specifically, is the capitalized proper name for the tribe or group of elite uruks that Saruman bred, so that they refer to themselves collectively by that term.
This is consistent with the story, except in one place: Greenwood's example 7, where the Mordor orcs that are hunting Sam refer to "a pack of rebel Uruk-hai". I don't think it's likely that they are referring to Saruman's orc-troops! Yes it could be argued that Mordor's orcs have their own folk-knowledge of foreign orc tribes, allies, etc. But to think that these orcs or their masters have imagined that a rogue band of Saruman's troops - from Isengard, hundreds of miles across enemy territory - have "raided the tower" and are scurrying through the Morgai, seems too over the top to take any further.
Rather, I interpret this usage to be taken in its generic sense, as (N.E.B. tells us) it appears in Tolkien's language-notes: uruk-hai originally meant "Orc-folk", with "orc" here meaning specifically the large soldier uruks. I think it's kind of sloppy of Tolkien to use it here, by the way - because the distinction is a fine one, and is inherently confusing. He could at least have left it in lower-case!
How can the collective term mean both things, all uruks and just Saruman's uruks? It is very common among tribal peoples to apply the generic name of their kind only to their own specific tribe. For instance, many Native American peoples' names for themselves could be translated "The Human Beings". Other humans, when encountered, were not "Human Beings", but some lesser type of person! Nor have those of "non-tribal" European descent always been guiltless of assigning less-than-human status to people that were unlike them in some superficial way.
I suggest that that is what Tolkien is doing with his "Fighting Uruk-hai" honorific, that Saruman's uruks have adopted. They are saying "We are the Fighting Soldier-Orc Corps!" even though there are actually plenty of other fighting soldier-orc corps in Mordor (and we see how irked Grishnakh is by this arrogance of Ugluk, in this current chapter). The usage takes the concept of uruk-hai (which includes all the various uruk-folk that Sauron and Saruman have bred, as referred to by the Mordor orcs in example 7 above) and restricts it, in the minds of the speakers, to just the Uruk-hai, the soldiers of the White Hand.
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One Ringer
Tol Eressea
Apr 27 2008, 10:41pm
Post #5 of 14
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I only used it for short form . . .
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plus, I'm sure that I heard it somewhere before. I also like the sound of it.  The Uruks!
Ash nazg durbatulūk, Ash nazg gimbatul,
Ash nazg thrakatulūk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.
I'm hosting THE URUK-HAI in The Reading Room! Swing by and join in!
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Tolkien Forever
Gondor
Apr 28 2008, 5:05am
Post #6 of 14
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:
First: just as anyone posting to these boards would deserve to be properly acknowledged if their comments here were quoted elsewhere, I'd like to note that the post you copied for this discussion was by one "Greenwood" and originally found here.
Yes 'Curious' wrote that post and did such a good job, it convinced me.
Second: forty-eight pages of discussion, dating back six years! Any chance you could summarize the arguments in a few paragraphs for us, TF?
I made it through 2 pages & said "enough's enough" - the first poost had convinced me anyhow......
Third: what do you make of the reference, on the very last page of that discussion, to Tolkien's notes on the names in LotR that were published last year in Parma Eldalamberon 17, where he writes simply that "uruk-hai" means "orc folk"?
So you read all 48 pages NEB? Mister, you're a better man than I.
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sador
Half-elven
Apr 28 2008, 6:26am
Post #7 of 14
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Saruman's troops call themselves 'the fighting Uruk-hai', and 'the Uruk-hai' is just a short form for that. And the chapter's name and Pippin's memory clearly relate to that.
The one problematic example is no. 7. But my take on it is that a term like 'Uruk-hai' could easily be seen as honorific among certain tribes (especially with 'fighting' before it), and derogatory among others (who coined the name 'Olog-hai'? I would guess Orcs, and I'm not sure it was very honorary). I remember reading that in Russia, the proper name for 'a Jew' in Poland was the Antisemitic derogatory name in Poland, and vice versa - so Jews fleeing from the Nazis were actually scolded for refering to themselves with contempt! So a similar thing might have happened here.
To add to the confusion, there is the distinction in the Hobbit between 'goblin' and 'orc'. I would guess 'mountain orc' to mean the same as 'Uruks' in LOTR, but that would mean they were already in the Misty Mountains, and the Grey Mountains.
"I'm not going to do anything with you: not if by that you mean 'do something to you' without your leave. We might do some things together" - Treebeard
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Elizabeth
Half-elven
Apr 28 2008, 8:08am
Post #8 of 14
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Do any of the lore-masters here know
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...what orcs are doing in the Misty Mtns anyway? Maybe retreated there after the War of Wrath and have been there ever since, providing occasional snacks for the Balrog? Literary leftovers from Bilbo's goblins? Answers within or external to the frame of the story accepted with pleasure.
New grandson of Elizabeth, b. 2/25/2008
Elizabeth is the TORnsib formerly known as 'erather'
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visualweasel
Rohan
Apr 28 2008, 1:55pm
Post #9 of 14
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Regardless of what Saruman's orcs call themselves, what the orcs of Mordor call themsleves, or how they or non-orcs refer to this band or that band of loyalists or rebels, the word uruk simply means orc, and uruk-hai simply means orc-folk, as Tolkien says in his Notes (PE17).The word uruk itself is clearly a worn-down form of the Sindarin orch we are told so explicitly in Appendix F which in turn (external to the story) was suggested by Old English orcneas. If there is any distinction at all, then it's a purely semantic and contextual one, not a literal or linguistic one. Kind of like the difference between calling the 98-pound weakling a man, but Charles Atlas a Real Man. But of course, both are male human beings, so ...
I really have never understood all the hair-splitting over the proper application of Uruk-hai (capital U). I suppose this may come as a surprise to some who know me what?! Jason, not taking advantage of a chance to split hairs to the nth degree?!
Shocking!! 
Jason Fisher
Lingwė - Musings of a Fish
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sador
Half-elven
Apr 28 2008, 7:33pm
Post #10 of 14
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So 'Greenwood' is actually Curious?
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Well, I don't look much in the old boards; but if true, this might be an interesting fact to remember.
"I'm not going to do anything with you: not if by that you mean 'do something to you' without your leave. We might do some things together" - Treebeard
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N.E. Brigand
Half-elven
Apr 28 2008, 7:40pm
Post #11 of 14
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We're discussing The Lord of the Rings in the Reading Room, Oct. 15, 2007 - Mar. 22, 2009!
Join us Apr. 28-May 4 for "Treebeard".
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a.s.
Valinor
Apr 28 2008, 8:29pm
Post #12 of 14
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Don't think so, different board
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That's not our old board, in case anyone is confused, that's an entirely different Tolkien board.
a.s.
"an seileachan"
"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."
"I suppose you are real?" said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive.
But the Skin Horse only smiled.
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Curious
Half-elven
Apr 28 2008, 11:50pm
Post #13 of 14
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Tolkien Forever
Gondor
Apr 29 2008, 12:14am
Post #14 of 14
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...what orcs are doing in the Misty Mtns anyway? Maybe retreated there after the War of Wrath and have been there ever since,
Might be....
Off the top of myhead though, I cannot think of any mention of there being orcs (Uruks, lol) in the Misty Mountains prior to the Third Age.
Perhaps when Sauron invaded Eriador in SA 1996, the orcs then peopled the Misty Mountains?
In The Tale of Years, c TA 1300, it reads: 'Orcs increase in the Misty Mountains' Note increase however, meaning there where already some there. As we all know (I'm sure), Tolkien makes the point several times of evil creatures multiplying when Sauron increases in evil & orcs are certainly 'evil creatures'.....
providing occasional snacks for the Balrog?
Well, firstly, Moria was peopled with Dwarves most of the time. Only the last thousand years of the Third Age was there (secondly) an active balrog there & thirdly, five hundred more years go by before Sauron 'begins to people Moria with his creatures' (TA 2480). Finally, do Balrogs even eat?
Literary leftovers from Bilbo's goblins?
It says in the Hobbit that 3\4 of the Goblins of the Misty Mountains were destroyed in The Battle of Five Armies, but in TLOR, I think perhaps Gloin (?) says they've spread in secret since then. Somebody says it for sure anyhow.
Answers within or external to the frame of the story accepted with pleasure.
BTW: As for the 'Tolkien Scholar' view that 'Uruk' is just a translation of 'orc' (which it technically is), then why does Tolkien himself use 'Black Uruks' out of Mordor & such & have Gandalf use the term in Moria?
This in itself indicates a difference of a larger type of orc in Tolkien's mind.......
Regardless of 'Uruk vs. Uruk-Hai', you must grant me that 'black Uruks' are a larger, stronger type of orc that appeared in the latter Third Age.......
No?
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