The naming of weapons in Middle-earth is the giving of names to swords and other powerful weapons in J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium. He derived the naming of weapons from his knowledge of Medieval times; the practice is found in Norse mythology and in the Old English poem Beowulf. Among the many weapons named by Tolkien are Orcrist and Glamdring in The Hobbit, and Narsil / Andúril in The Lord of the Rings. Such weapons carry powerful symbolism, embodying the identity and ancestry of their owners. There are multiple parallels between Tolkien's usage of named weapons in his Middle-earth writings, and the Medieval epics. These include their inheritance as heirlooms, sometimes royal; their rediscovery in ancient treasure-hoards; their being broken and reforged; their adornment with runic inscriptions; and their interlinking with the lives of their owners. Background Naming of Medieval weapons In Medieval epics, heroes gave names to their weapons. The name, lineage, and power of the weapon reflected on the hero. Among the major tales are those of Sigurd the Volsung and his sword Gram that he used to kill the dragon Fafnir; Beowulf and the swords Hrunting and Nægling; King Arthur's Excalibur, the "Sword in the Stone"; Roland's Durendal; Waldere's Mimming; and the Elder Eddas account of the "Waking of Angantyr" (the Hervararkviða) and the sword Tyrfing. Heroic literature did not always name its weapons; in ancient Greece, Homer describes the shield and spear of Achilles in detail but does not give them names. He does not name the crucial bow of Odysseus: the weapon that allows him to demonstrate his own identity, his own name as he returns home to Ithaca, functions anonymously in the story. The case is different in the stories and myths of medieval Northern Europe, where the name of a weapon, especially of a sword, gave it an identity, almost a personality. The name, writes the Tolkien scholar Janet Brennan Croft, "marks a weapon as an heirloom tying generations together and legitimizing the heir who holds it." Some 200 sword names are recorded in medieval writings, in line with the Norse practice of naming objects in stories, such as the Dwarf-made chain Gleipnir that unbreakably fastened Fenris the giant wolf. Powerful swords Such weapons were praised both for their strength and for their history. For example, Nægling is repeatedly described with epithets such as "sharp", "gleaming", "bright", "mighty", and "strong", while its history