Know Your LotRO Lore: Origins of the Orc
So, did J.R.R. Tolkien invent the Orc as we know it today? Well, yes and no. Although the word "orc" is actually derived from the Old English "orcneas" as it first appeared in Beowulf, Tolkien only used the word itself to describe a creature he invented, because of its "phonetic suitability". He also described another influence for the word deriving from the Latin name Orcus, who was the god of the underworld.
As any Tolkien fan may realize, the man changed his mind quite often. While he initially spelled the word "orc", he later showed interest in changing the spelling to "ork" in all of his books, although that never happened.
In The Hobbit, the Orcs were known as goblins. Yet later, Tolkien made the distinction between the two, calling goblins separate from Orcs. He is also careful to dismiss any connection with sea mammals with the same name: "Orc is the hobbits' form of the name given at that time to these creatures, and it is not connected at all with orc, ork, applied to sea-animals of dolphin-kind." Another name for the Orc in his writings originated as "hobgoblins", which he meant to describe the larger version of the goblins. Upon further research, he realized that using "hob" was a mistake, as it traditionally meant smaller, not larger.
Tolkien always stood by his story that nothing in Middle-earth was inherently evil. This includes the Orcs and goblins, as both were mainly seen as slaves to Saruman. They hated themselves, they hated each other and it's even said that they hated Saruman and Sauron.
So where did they come from, exactly? This is another highly-debatable topic among Tolkien fans. While there was no mention of female Orcs in any of the books, Tolkien did later say that they did exist. We see proof of offsping as Gollum devours a young Orc child in The Hobbit. As disturbing as the thought might be, in the Silmarillion it is said that Orcs "breed after the manner of Elves and Men". I don't even want to think about how Half-orcs were made.
Some theories state Orcs were created from the ground. In The Book of Lost Tales, it is said that Orcs were "bred from the heats and slimes of the earth" through the sorcery of Morgoth. Again, Tolkien later changed this, as Morgoth could not create life on his own. This led to the most popular theory that Orcs were created from corrupted Elves. This brings into account the whole immortality of Elves and Orcs issue, but most people agree that this theory is Tolkien's final word on the subject. It is believed that the corruption of the Elves captured by Morgoth involved eating the flesh of fellow Elves, therefore losing their immortality and becoming horribly disfigured as punishment.
Other theories do exist, such as Orcs simply being sentient beasts, but not actually humanoid. Of course we could talk all day about parallel ideas, but these mentioned here are the most popular, and cited by Tolkien himself.
