Torres Elvish tattoo

There are not very many times when the worlds of football and imaginary universes collide. This is one of those times. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies debuts in theaters today, and something within that movie will look eerily familiar to something that a few football players have put on their bodies in permanent ink.

Writer J.R.R. Tolkien created the universe of Middle Earth with influences from his time during World War I. He wrote The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, which became well known, eventually being adapted into movies. For those who have not come across either the books or the movies, we have you covered. As a fan of the books, I will try to stay out of full-nerd mode and summarize. Middle Earth is a world which contains multiple fictional beings, including dwarves, elves, hobbits, giants, necromancers, humans, and many more. There is good and evil, a fight for power, and all your pieces for a great story.

Now, where most authors might just use things that already exist, such as language, Tolkien fully immersed himself into his fictional world. We are talking family trees that extend centuries and generations, death and revival of characters, those sorts of things. He even devised multiple fictional languages, one of which we will highlight here.

Nerd Alert! One of the races of beings in the Middle Earth universe is Elves. Not only are there multiple factions of elves, Tolkien created multiple languages of the elves. I dare say that there are two popular versions of Elvin languages, but there are. The language that we will examine is Tengwar, don’t even ask about its background. Despite very few people being able to read the language, there are multiple translators on the internet.

Fernando Torres Elvish tattoo

How does this all relate to football? It just so happens that two of the best strikers in the world have their names tattooed on their arms in Tengwar. Fernando Torres and Sergio Aguero have emblazoned their left and right arms, respectively, with the Elvin language. Torres has long been known to be an avid Lord of the Rings series fan. The tattoo on his left arm is the Spanish Mode of “Fernando” in Tengwar. According to quenya101.com, there is a slight mistake with the tattoo. The tengwa accent is supposed to be over the first “m” looking character; instead it is over the second. Sergio Aguero got the idea for his Tengwar tattoo from Torres. Aguero’s tattoo reads “Kun Aguero” in Tengwar on his right forearm.

Sergio Aguero's tattoo

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Since both players spent a portion of their careers at Atletico Madrid, one could wonder if the two polarizing strikers established a book club while they were teammates in Madrid. Either way, both players are hoping their Elvin tattoos will give them some goal scoring magic as they look to help their teams climb to the top of their respective leagues.

Be sure to check out The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, in theaters this week.

 

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