““Middle-earth is ... not my own invention. It is a modernization or alteration ... of an old word for the inhabited world of Men, the oikoumene : middle because thought of vaguely as set amidst the encircling Seas and (in the northern-imagination) between ice of the North and the fire of the South. O. English middan-geard , mediaeval E. midden-erd, middle-erd . Many reviewers seem to assume that Middle-earth is another planet!””
