Orcs and Goblins of Middle-earth — Origins, Names and Black Speech

Quick Answer: In Tolkien, orcs and goblins are the same people. The Hobbit mostly says "goblin", The Lord of the Rings mostly says "orc", and Tolkien treated "goblin" as an English rendering of "orc". The Silmarillion reports the Elvish belief that Melkor bred the first orcs from captured, tortured Elves, though Tolkien later doubted that story. The Elves called them orch (plural yrch) in Sindarin, orco in Quenya, and Glamhoth, "yelling horde".

Orcs are everywhere in Middle-earth. They ambush the Fellowship in Moria, carry Merry and Pippin across Rohan, and fill the armies of Mordor and Isengard. Yet Tolkien spent more effort worrying about orcs than about almost any other creature he invented: where they came from, whether they had souls, and whether they could be redeemed. The answer changed across decades of drafts.

This guide covers the whole picture. It explains why the same creatures are called goblins in one book and orcs in the next, walks through the origin debate in Tolkien's own writings, tours the great orc strongholds from Moria to Mount Gundabad, separates book lore from film-only additions, and ends with the attested Elvish words for orc, with meanings and pronunciation.

It is part of our series on the races of Middle-earth. If you came for the language side, keep reading to the section on orcs in Elvish, or jump straight into the free Elvish course.

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Orc or Goblin: Is There a Difference?

The short answer is no. Tolkien wrote The Hobbit (1937) as a children's story and reached for the familiar English word "goblin". In The Lord of the Rings (1954–55) he used "orc" almost everywhere, but he did not invent a new race. The Great Goblin of The Hobbit and the orcs of Moria belong to the same people.

Tolkien said so directly. Appendix F to The Lord of the Rings explains that "orc" is the form of the name taken from the language of Rohan, which he rendered with an Old English word. In the narrative itself the two words overlap. Characters in The Lord of the Rings still speak of "goblins" now and then, and The Hobbit uses "orc" a handful of times, for example in the name Orcrist, "Goblin-cleaver", Thorin's sword.

Why did the word change?

Two reasons stand out.

1. Tone. "Goblin" belonged to fairy tales, with George MacDonald's goblins in The Princess and the Goblin as an obvious ancestor. As Tolkien's world grew darker and more serious, he wanted a word without nursery associations.
2. Language. Tolkien preferred names with a history. Orc appears in Old English glosses for a demon or ogre (as in orcneas in Beowulf), so it fitted the Rohirric layer of his fiction, which he always rendered with Old English. He also noted that the sound was close to Elvish words for the same creature, which made the borrowing feel natural inside the story.

Where the "goblins are small orcs" idea comes from

Many later games and novels split goblins off as a smaller, weaker cousin of orcs. That split has a seed in Tolkien, because his orcs vary in size. Smaller breeds such as the snaga of Mordor are contrasted with the great Uruk-hai, and the goblins of The Hobbit are often small enough to scurry through tunnels. But Tolkien never made size the dividing line between two names. Both words cover the whole range, from a cringing tracker to a captain of Barad-dûr. When you read Tolkien, treat "goblin" and "orc" as synonyms, and treat the size difference as a matter of breed.

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Where Did Orcs Come From? The Origin Debate

Few questions in Tolkien's work generated more drafts. The tension is theological. In his world only Eru Ilúvatar, the One, can create life with a will of its own. Melkor, the first Dark Lord, can corrupt and mock, but he cannot make. So where did a whole race of evil, speaking, reproducing creatures come from?

The Silmarillion's answer: corrupted Elves

The published Silmarillion (1977), edited by Christopher Tolkien, gives the best-known answer in the chapter "Of the Coming of the Elves". It reports what the wise among the Eldar believed: that in the first ages, before the Elves were summoned to Valinor, Melkor's servants captured some of the newly awakened Elves, carried them to his fortress of Utumno, and by slow cruelty bred from them the race of orcs.

The text frames this as Elvish belief, not certainty. The same idea echoes in The Lord of the Rings, where Treebeard tells Merry and Pippin that trolls were made in mockery of Ents, as orcs were of Elves (The Two Towers, "Treebeard"). This explains the deepest horror of orcs from the Elves' point of view. They are not simply enemies; they may be a ruined version of the Elves' own kin. You can read more about the Elves and their sundering in our guide to the Elves of Middle-earth.

Tolkien's later doubts

Tolkien did not stay comfortable with this answer. In essays written mostly in the late 1950s and published in Morgoth's Ring (volume 10 of The History of Middle-earth), especially in the section Christopher Tolkien titled "Myths Transformed", he tested several alternatives:

• Orcs from Men. Men awoke later than Elves, and Tolkien considered that Morgoth might have corrupted Men instead, which would solve a timing problem: Elves in Utumno before the Great Journey leave little time for an orc army to grow.
• Orcs from beasts. He considered that orcs might be beasts given a mocking imitation of speech, with no true will. He backed away from this, because his orcs plainly talk, scheme, and argue like people.
• Orcs with spirits inside. He suggested that some of the great orc-captains could be lesser Maiar, fallen spirits who took orc form, while the rank and file were bred creatures.
• Mixed origins. Late notes allow that several of these sources could be true at once, and that orcs could interbreed with Men, a dark thread he connects to Saruman's crossbreeding in Isengard.

Tolkien never published a final verdict. The honest summary is that the Silmarillion gives the traditional Elvish belief, and that Tolkien himself left the question open.

Do orcs have souls?

This is the moral side of the same puzzle. If orcs are children of Ilúvatar who were corrupted, then they have souls and are not irredeemable by nature. In his letters and late essays Tolkien took this seriously. He described orcs as morally corrupt, but he did not want to write a race that was evil by definition and could be killed without any moral weight. The books show this in small ways. Orcs complain about their officers, fear punishment, have a sense of fairness they apply only to themselves, and in the overheard conversation of Shagrat and Gorbag in The Return of the King they even dream of slipping away to run their own business. They are recognisably people, which is exactly what makes them disturbing.

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The Goblins of the Misty Mountains

The goblins of The Hobbit live in the Misty Mountains, the long range that splits Eriador from the Vale of Anduin. Their tunnels made the passes dangerous for centuries.

Goblin-town and the Great Goblin

In chapter 4 of The Hobbit, "Over Hill and Under Hill", Thorin's company shelters in a cave near the High Pass. Goblins open a crack at the back, seize the dwarves and Bilbo, and drag them down into Goblin-town. Their ruler, the Great Goblin, recognises Orcrist and flies into a rage, since that sword had killed many goblins in the days of Gondolin. Gandalf kills him with Glamdring, the "Foe-hammer", and the company escapes. Bilbo is separated in the dark, which is how he ends up at Gollum's lake. That encounter, and the riddle contest that follows, is covered in our guide to The Hobbit riddle game.

Tolkien's goblins in this chapter show his early, fairy-tale touch: they sing mocking songs, build cunning machines, and love wheels and explosions. Even here, though, he notes that they hate everyone, especially the orderly and prosperous.

Golfimbul and the Battle of Greenfields

The very first chapter of The Hobbit contains a joke with real history behind it. Bilbo's ancestor Bandobras "Bullroarer" Took knocked the head off the goblin king Golfimbul at the Battle of Greenfields, and the head flew into a rabbit hole, which, the narrator says, is how the game of golf was invented. The battle itself, a goblin raid into the Shire's Northfarthing in Third Age 2747, appears in the Shire chronology of Appendix B.

Mount Gundabad

At the northern end of the Misty Mountains stands Mount Gundabad. In dwarven tradition it was the place where Durin the Deathless awoke, which made its capture by orcs a deep insult to Durin's Folk. The orcs who marched to the Battle of Five Armies gathered from Gundabad and other northern strongholds. You can read about why the dwarves cared so much about these halls in our guide to the Dwarves of Middle-earth.

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The Orcs of Moria

Moria, called Khazad-dûm by the dwarves, was the greatest dwarf-realm of Middle-earth until the dwarves woke a Balrog in the Third Age and fled. Orcs moved into the empty halls.

Azog and the War of the Dwarves and Orcs

Appendix A of The Lord of the Rings tells the story. Thrór, the exiled King under the Mountain, went alone into Moria and was murdered by the orc-chieftain Azog, who mutilated his body and carved his own name on it. The dwarves answered with years of war, ending in the Battle of Azanulbizar in the Dimrill Dale, before the East-gate of Moria, in Third Age 2799. There Dáin Ironfoot, still young, killed Azog. The dwarves won but at such cost that they did not reclaim Moria, partly because Dáin sensed the Balrog still waiting in the deep. Our Khuzdul guide covers the dwarven names behind these places.

Bolg and the Battle of Five Armies

Azog's son Bolg led the goblins and wolves at the Battle of Five Armies at the end of The Hobbit. Beorn killed him on the field. The wolves who fought beside the goblins were the Wargs, an alliance covered in our guide to Wargs and wolves of Middle-earth.

The Fellowship in Moria

When the Fellowship enters Moria in The Fellowship of the Ring, the orcs are back in force. Balin's colony has been wiped out, the Book of Mazarbul ends in a dying scrawl, and the company fights orcs and a cave-troll in the Chamber of Mazarbul. A huge orc-chieftain stabs Frodo, whose mithril coat saves his life. Then the orcs give way to something worse, the Balrog called Durin's Bane, whose story is told in our post on the Balrogs of Middle-earth. The cave-troll belongs to another people again, covered in Trolls of Middle-earth.

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Orcs in The Lord of the Rings

The Lord of the Rings gives orcs more personality than any other Tolkien work. Several have names and voices.

The orcs who take Merry and Pippin

In The Two Towers, a mixed band carries the captured hobbits across Rohan. It contains three factions who distrust each other:

• Uglúk and the Uruk-hai of Isengard, who serve Saruman and call themselves the fighting Uruk-hai.
• Grishnákh and orcs from Mordor, who have their own orders from Barad-dûr and suspect the hobbits carry the Ring.
• Northern orcs from Moria, who want revenge for their dead.

Their arguing is what lets the hobbits escape into Fangorn when the Riders of Rohan attack. For the full story of Saruman's breed, see the Uruk-hai explained. The Riders themselves are part of the Men of Middle-earth.

Shagrat and Gorbag at Cirith Ungol

In The Return of the King and the end of The Two Towers, Sam overhears Shagrat, captain of the Tower of Cirith Ungol, and Gorbag of Minas Morgul. Their talk shows orc society from the inside: resentment of the Nazgûl, fear of the Eye, scorn for their own superiors, and greed. Their two companies later fight over Frodo's mithril shirt and almost wipe each other out, which is what lets Sam rescue Frodo. The orcs' fear of their masters connects to our guide on the Nazgûl and Ringwraiths.

Sunlight and the Uruk-hai

Ordinary orcs dislike the sun and fight poorly in daylight. One of the marks of the Uruk-hai, according to Appendix F, is that they could endure the sun. That was a real military advantage, and it made Saruman's and Sauron's newer breeds more dangerous than the old goblin tribes.

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What Language Do Orcs Speak?

Appendix F gives a clear answer. Orcs had no common language of their own. Morgoth's servants had taken words from other tongues and twisted them, and each tribe developed its own dialect, so different tribes could barely understand each other. In the Third Age they used a coarse form of Westron, the Common Speech, between tribes. This is why the orcs in Rohan argue in Westron, which the hobbits can follow.

Sauron devised the Black Speech in the Dark Years, hoping it would become the language of all his servants. That never fully happened. After his first fall the Black Speech was forgotten except by the Nazgûl, but a debased form survived among the soldiers of Barad-dûr and their captains. Tolkien recorded only a small number of genuine Black Speech words. Among them are uruk, used for the great soldier-orcs, snaga, "slave", used for lesser orcs, and ghâsh, "fire". Grishnákh's and Uglúk's curses in The Two Towers include a few untranslated orkish words as well.

The single longest Black Speech text is the Ring inscription, decoded word by word in our post on the One Ring inscription. For a complete list of attested Black Speech and Orkish words, and which "Orkish" words online are fan-made, see Black Speech words: every attested word. Tengwar does not teach Black Speech as a course; the corpus is far too small to learn as a language. What it does teach is Elvish, the language the Free Peoples used to name and curse the orcs.

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Orcs in Elvish

The Elves knew orcs longer than anyone and had several words for them. Every word below is attested in Tolkien's writings and listed in our Elvish vocabulary data, with its meaning.

Yrch!

The Sindarin plural is the most famous form. In The Fellowship of the Ring, when the company is near Lothlórien and an orc band passes below the trees, the Elves hiss the warning Yrch!, "Orcs!". It is a nice example of a Sindarin sound change: the vowel o in orch becomes y in the plural yrch, the same pattern you see in other Sindarin plurals. That vowel change, called i-affection, is one of the first things a Sindarin learner meets, and our post on Quenya vs Sindarin explains why Sindarin plurals look so different from Quenya ones.

Glamhoth, the yelling horde

Glamhoth is a compound. Glam means "din, uproar", the confused bellowing of beasts, and hoth means "host, horde". Together they make a contemptuous name for orcs as a mindless, shrieking mob. It says a lot about how the Elves saw them: not as a nation, but as noise.

Orco and urco

In Quenya, the High-elven tongue, the ordinary word is orco. Quenya also preserves urco, glossed "bogey, orc", which points to an older sense of a vague terror in the dark, the kind of thing the earliest Elves feared before they knew what was taking their people. That fits the Silmarillion's story of Elves vanishing from the shores of Cuiviénen.

If you want to look these up yourself, our Elvish dictionary of common words and the English to Elvish translator show how Quenya and Sindarin handle other words of the same kind. And if you want to see what Yrch or your own name looks like in Elvish script, try the Tengwar name generator, or draw the letters by hand in Tengwar Scribe.

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Book vs Film: Orcs on Screen

Peter Jackson's films brought orcs to life with prosthetics and digital effects, and they changed a few things. The following are film-only:

• Azog alive in The Hobbit films (film-only). In the books Azog died at Azanulbizar in Third Age 2799, long before Bilbo's journey. The films keep him alive as the "Pale Orc" hunting Thorin, and make Bolg his lieutenant.
• Lurtz (film-only). The Uruk-hai captain who kills Boromir in The Fellowship of the Ring film does not exist in the books. See our Uruk-hai explained post.
• Uruk-hai grown from mud (film-only). The film shows Saruman's Uruks born from pits beneath Isengard. The books only hint that Saruman bred them, possibly by crossing orcs and Men.
• Gothmog as a deformed orc (film presentation). In The Return of the King book, Gothmog is the lieutenant of Minas Morgul and Tolkien never says what he is. The film makes him an orc. He is unrelated to the Balrog Gothmog of the First Age.
• Goblin-town's design. The films' Great Goblin, a huge bloated king, is a visual invention. In the book he is simply described as large, with a large head.

The films stay close to the books on the core ideas: orcs as a twisted people, their hatred of sunlight, the factions of Isengard and Mordor, and the Moria battle. For other differences between book and screen in the Hobbit films, see the Hobbit films' Elvish, Thranduil and Tauriel.

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Orcs in the First Age

Orcs fought in every great war of the Silmarillion. The first orc assaults struck Beleriand before the rising of the Moon, and the Sindarin Elves under Thingol had to fight them with little warning. In the Dagor Bragollach, the Battle of Sudden Flame, orc hosts poured out of Angband behind fire and dragons, and Beleriand was overrun. Orcs held the passes in Túrin's tale and carried the war to the hidden city of Gondolin. Glorfindel's last fight, against a Balrog on the mountain path out of Gondolin, takes place while orcs harry the fleeing survivors. The dragons who led those assaults have their own chapter in our guide to the Dragons of Middle-earth.

This long history matters for the language. The Sindarin words for orcs come from a people who fought them for centuries at close range, which is why the vocabulary is so rich in contempt: a word for orc, a plural shouted as a warning, and a name meaning "yelling horde".

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Why Orcs Still Matter

Orcs became the template for a whole genre. Games, novels and tabletop settings borrowed the word and gave it new meanings, often as a misunderstood warrior people. Tolkien's version is darker and more uneasy. His orcs are frightening because they are close to us: they gossip, complain about officers, mock each other, and look after their own skins. Tolkien's long doubt about their origin is part of that. He wanted a world where even the enemy raised hard moral questions.

For a reader learning Elvish, the orcs are also a way into the language. Tolkien built Elvish words for the things the Elves loved and the things they feared, and the words for orcs are some of the most vivid. Learning orch, yrch and Glamhoth shows you Sindarin plurals, compounds and sound changes in one small, memorable set.

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People Also Ask

Are orcs and goblins the same in The Hobbit?

Yes. The Hobbit mostly says "goblin", but Tolkien later confirmed these are the same people he called orcs in The Lord of the Rings. The Great Goblin is an orc chieftain.

Were orcs once Elves?

The Silmarillion reports that the wise among the Eldar believed so: Melkor captured early Elves and bred orcs from them. Tolkien later questioned this in essays published in Morgoth's Ring and never settled on one answer.

What does "Yrch" mean?

Yrch is the Sindarin plural of orch, "orc", so it means "orcs". The Elves use it as a warning cry in The Fellowship of the Ring.

Can orcs go out in the sun?

Ordinary orcs hate sunlight and are weakened by it. The Uruk-hai bred by Saruman and Sauron could endure it, which Appendix F lists as one of their marks.

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Learn the Language the Elves Used for Orcs

The Elves had a word for everything they met, from stars to the Glamhoth. If you want to read those words in Tolkien's own languages, start with Learn Elvish free: 10 lessons in Quenya and Sindarin at no cost, with audio, quizzes and spaced review. For more context first, our complete guide to Tolkien's Elvish languages and what language the elves speak in LOTR are good places to begin.

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Related Reading

• Races of Middle-earth: The Complete Guide
• The Uruk-hai Explained
• Trolls of Middle-earth
• Black Speech Words: Every Attested Word of Mordor's Tongue
• The One Ring Inscription in Black Speech Explained
• Elves of Middle-earth
• Dwarves of Middle-earth
• Wargs and Wolves of Middle-earth
• Lord of the Rings Elvish Phrases
• Tengwar Alphabet Guide