Mordor... the Land of Shadow

The Orcs of Middle-earth
Warring Servants of the Dark Lord

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Meaning: Derives from Old English, 'demons' (but see The Etymology of 'Orc' below)
Other Names: Goblins, Glamhoth, Yrch
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Little is known for certain of the beginnings of the Orcs, the footsoldiers of the Enemy. It is said that they were in origin corrupted Elves captured by Melkor before the beginning of the First Age.

In appearance, Orcs were squat, swarthy creatures. Most of them preferred the darkness, being blinded by the light of the Sun, but the kinds bred later in the Third Age such as the Uruk-hai could endure the daylight.

URUKS

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"Great Orcs... that kind is stronger and more fell than all others."Éomer, from The Two Towers III 2, The Riders of Rohan

Common name for the large soldier-orcs of Mordor and later also Isengard that troubled Gondor and Rohan in the late Third Age.

In fact, this name is only ever used by Éomer, and may only have been current in Rohan, but the fearsome creatures it described had been known for five hundred years when he spoke these words: creatures whose name in their own Black Speech was Uruk-hai.

URUK-HAI - First seen in c.2475 (Third Age)

The great soldier-orcs that first appeared in the late Third Age; they were larger and stronger than their forebears, and could withstand the light
of the sun.

YRCH

The Sindarin name for the race known to Men as Orcs. 'Yrch' is the plural form; the singular is 'orch'.

SNAGA - A name for lesser Orcs

A contemptuous term for the lesser Orcs of Mordor and Isengard, used especially among the larger and stronger Uruk-hai. It comes from a word in the Black Speech meaning 'slave'.

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Goblins

A name for Orcs, and especially the smaller kinds that infested the Misty and the Grey Mountains in the later Third Age, and had their capital at Mount Gundabad.

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Is there a difference between an 'Orc' and a 'Goblin'? The following quote from the foreword to The Hobbit sheds some light on this: "[The word 'Orc'] occurs in one or two places but is usually translated goblin (or hobgoblin for the larger kinds)." (Hence the statement above; 'especially the smaller kinds'). This entry concentrates on the goblins of the Grey and Misty Mountains simply because it is these Orcs that Tolkien most frequently refers to by the term 'goblin'.

The word 'goblin' is also used occasionally and indiscriminately in The Lord of the Rings; it never occurs in the The Silmarillion.

The relationship of 'goblin' to 'kobold' is a theory proposed by the Oxford English Dictionary, which suggests the following derivation (we've taken the liberty of expanding their standard abbreviations):

"Middle English, probably from Anglo-French *gobelin, medieval Latin gobelinus, probably from name diminutive of Gobel, related to Kobold"

The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English

In fact, there are at least two other theories. The first concerns two medieval parties, the Guelphs and the Ghibellines. The Guelphs were supposed to have despised their rival Ghibellines so much that their name became a 'bogey' word, and ultimately evolved into modern
'goblin'. The Ghibellines despised the Guelphs in equal measure, and so their name, too, apparently descended to modern times as 'elf'. Ingenious and economical as this theory is, it is almost certainly wrong.

A somewhat more plausible idea relates goblins back to the almost-forgotten fairy figure of Ghob, the King of the Gnomes. In Old English, the earth-spirits who followed him might well have been referred to as Ghoblings, and this gives us a third possible source of the name, somewhat older than the other two.

Hobgoblins
Greater Goblins

'Orc is not an English word. It occurs in one or two places but is usually translated goblin (or hobgoblin for the larger kinds)2' Preface to The Hobbit

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A name for the larger kinds of Orc found in Middle-earth in the Third Age. The term perhaps, but doubtfully, refers to the large soldier-orcs known as Uruks.

The term appears so rarely that there is little clear basis for a definition. Its only other occurrence is later in The Hobbit (7, Queer Lodgings) where Gandalf warns Bilbo that the Grey Mountains are 'simply stiff with goblins, hobgoblins, and orcs of the worst description'.

Notes

1 - If 'hobgoblin' is just a general term for a large Orc, then their race is old indeed, predating the First Age. If, much less certainly, it refers to the Uruk-hai, then their appearance is more recent: about III 2475. This is recent in terms of the history of Middle-earth, but still five centuries earlier than Bilbo's adventures in The Hobbit.

2 - In fact, 'orcs' appears exactly twice in The Hobbit: once in Gandalf's warning, given above, and once in Chapter 5, Riddles in the Dark: '...even the big ones, orcs of the mountains, go along at great speed...'

Wolfriders

Orcs and Goblins, presumably quite small in stature, that rode into battle on ferocious wolves and the larger Wargs.

The information above comes from the The Encyclopedia of Arda.