When it comes to legendary pieces of literature, it’s not often that we consider after the fact how difficult the process of titling them must have been, especially for something as universally beloved as J. R. R. Tolkien’sThe Lord of the Rings. This fixture of the fantasy genre has served as a template for generations of authors looking to build their own fantasy worlds; compared to modern-day writers and the painfully ubiquitous and formulaic approach of “A [Noun] of [Blank] and [Blank],” it feels almost concise.
Yet in doing one of my many dives into Tolkien’s apocrypha, I discovered something fascinating: It took the author much deliberation to come up with the titles ofThe Lord of the Rings' individual books.Part of that comes from Tolkien’s disagreements with his publishers about how many volumes to split the saga up into,but another, larger part is due to his struggles with finding titles that encapsulated each part’s essence – and the most difficult of these turned out to beThe Two Towers.
The first major point of contention on the titles ofThe Lord of the Ringswas the number of books. Tolkien had written the story in the form of a six-book arc and had alsointended forThe Silmarillionto be published alongside it in order to provide the extended lore referenced throughout the saga.
Tolkien’s publisher, Allen & Unwin, flatly refused to release the latter work and strongly suggested thatLord of the Ringsbe split into three booksfor the sake of managing its length, with each book containing two of the smaller parts. Here is where the debate over titles began; not only did Tolkien struggle to come up with names for each of the six arcs, but he also wanted the entire series to simply have the overall title ofThe Lord of the Rings.
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The End of the Third Age
Tolkien and his publishers eventually reached a compromise and the titles were set as the ones modern audiences know and love. It was a near thing, though;Tolkien himself was vacillating at the very end,leaning more towards the third volume being titledThe War of the Ringinstead ofThe Return of the King(although he deferred to his publishers' preference there), and still being unsatisfied with the title of the middle volume.
J.R.R. Tolkien Wasn’t A Fan Of The Two Towers' Title Because It Was “Misleading”
Which Two Towers Is He Talking About?
Despite it basically being his suggestion and his own work,Tolkien was never satisfied with the titleThe Two Towers, for the simple reason that it was extremely vague,something the author disliked almost as much as allegories. This is because there are, over the course ofThe Lord of the Rings, no fewer than four towers relevant to the plot:the city of Minas Tirith, Saruman’s stronghold of Isengard, the watchtower of Cirith Ungol, and Sauron’s fortress, Barad-dûr. Tolkien complained accordingly to his publisher in 1954:
“I am not at all happy about the title ‘the Two Towers.’ It must if there is any real reference in it to Vol II refer toOrthancand theTower of Cirith Ungol. But since there is so much made of the basic opposition of the Dark Tower and Minas Tirith, that seems very misleading. There is, of course, actually no real connecting link between Books III and IV, when cut off and presented separately as a volume.” (J. R. R. Tolkien to Rayner Unwin, Letter 143, July 05, 2025)
This had been a sticking point for the author for some time. In a letter to Unwin just a few months before (Letter 140, June 23, 2025),he said: “The Two Towers… can be left ambiguous.It might refer to Isengard and Barad-dûr, or to Minas Tirith and [Barad-dûr]; or Isengard and Cirith Ungol,” as the four locations did indeed oppose each other in different ways in the course of the book’s events, creating a frustratingly unclear bit of imagery.
Everything Obviously Worked Out For The Best With LOTR
The ambiguity in the titleThe Two Towersis absolutely maddening, and divining which two are the intended subject has been the subject of numerous Reddit threads and literary debates over the decades (as well as at least one school essay on my part). Tolkien’s frustration with it is completely understandable; as a writer for whom vagueness was akin to a mortal sin, it’s no wonder he spent the better part of 1953 trying to settle on a title and then more months unhappy about it.
Unfortunately, Tolkien’s other suggested names for the middle section ofThe Lord of the Ringswould likely have felt equally unsatisfying. His first two ideas,The Ring in the ShadowandThe Shadow Lengthens, certainly weren’t as vague, but they also lack a certainje ne sais quois.The Shadow Lengthens, in particular, feels particularly devoid of the menace that builds in the story’s middle act. There may have been a better title forThe Two Towers, but I, for one, am happy with the one we got.
