What was J.R.R. Tolkien’s birth name, excluding his nickname and initials?

J.R.R. Tolkien’s birth name was John Ronald Reuel Tolkien.

He was born on 3 January 1892 in Bloemfontein, in the Orange Free State. The initials in his familiar author name stand for John, Ronald, and Reuel. “Ronald” was used as his second given name, while “Reuel” was a family name used by his father, Arthur Tolkien.

The author is commonly known as J.R.R. Tolkien rather than by his full name. His first name was John, not James or Richard, and the repeated middle-name combinations in biographies can make the exact form easy to misremember.

Tolkien’s early life included time in South Africa and later Birmingham, England. He became a philologist, literary scholar, and university teacher before achieving worldwide fame through The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. His personal name is separate from invented names such as Bilbo, Frodo, and Aragorn, which belong to his fictional world.