tolkien: treebeard says of the huorns: "they still have voices and can speak with the ents__read on?

Question

....thats why they are called huorns."
why does the fact that huorns can talk with ents mean they are called huorns..
i dont get it

Answer 1

Directly copied from the site listed under source which is an encyclopedia of things related to Middle Earth...

The name Huorn apparently has something to do with the Huorns' ability to speak. The word orn means "tree" but the meaning of the element hu is not clear. It may be related to hûn meaning "heart" or hûr meaning "readiness for action, vigor, fiery spirit." "Active tree" would be a suitable definition, though it does not specifically address the Huorns' speech capability. Curiously, the three earlier names that Tolkien used - Galbedirs, Lamorni, and Ornomi - all clearly meant "talking trees."

Answer 2

Huorn is an elvish word, probably from the Quenya language. The Ents could speak several languages, their own Entish, the old Elvish language Quenya, and the language of men. Some would speak other languages as well.
The Ents when speaking to Merry & Pippin used the language of men in general. As you will remember from the books the Ent's own language is very slow and precise "a-lalla-lalla-rumba-kamanda-lindor-burúme" is the word for hill, so Huorn is too short to be an Entish word. Because Huorn is not a word in the common language it must be an Elvish word. We find out that "orn" is the word for tree so "huorn" must mean something similar.
As the books imply Huorns are linked to Ents and are possibly Ents that have become treeish or trees that have become more Entlike and as such my guess is that Huorn means "treeish". Literally the "Hu" meaning like or similar and the "orn" meaning tree. So a Huorn is a being very like a tree, but with a secret voice Ents can hear and the ability to act if it needs to.

So I think a Huorn is called a Huorn because it is like a tree, or more precisely like a treeish Ent and the word Huorn litterally means treeish.

Answer 3

Trees are just trees- they don't move or talk. Huorns are trees that can do both, but they are too tree-like to be ents and too ent-like to be trees. They need their own separate category.