J.R.R. Tolkien’s academic field was philology.
Philology studies languages through their historical development and written records. Tolkien specialized in Germanic languages and medieval literature, including Old English, Middle English, Old Norse, and related traditions. His expertise helped him understand how words, sounds, and grammatical forms changed over time.
This background strongly influenced his creative work. Tolkien constructed languages such as Quenya and Sindarin with historical relationships, sound patterns, and internal development. He also drew on medieval texts and legends while creating the peoples, histories, and names of Middle-earth.
Philology is sometimes confused with linguistics, literature, or mythology. Those fields overlap, but Tolkien’s professional identity was specifically that of a philologist. His famous 1931 lecture “A Secret Vice” also described his personal interest in the invention of languages, showing how scholarship and creative language-making worked together for him.