C.S. Lewis used the nickname Tollers for his close friend J.R.R. Tolkien.
Lewis and Tolkien met at Oxford and became important members of the Inklings, an informal literary discussion group that also included Charles Williams and Owen Barfield. Their friendship involved regular conversations about mythology, language, literature, and Christianity, as well as readings from works in progress.
Tolkien’s formal name was John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, and he was commonly known as Ronald or J.R.R. Tolkien. Lewis’s nickname for him, “Tollers,” was a familiar form derived from Tolkien’s surname. Tolkien in turn referred to Lewis as Jack, the nickname Lewis used among friends and family.
Their friendship influenced both writers’ literary lives, although they were not co-authors of The Lord of the Rings or The Chronicles of Narnia. Tolkien helped encourage Lewis’s return to Christian belief, while Lewis became an early enthusiastic reader of Tolkien’s developing mythology and fiction.