Hobbit surnames
Douglas Burbury
Hello,
I have a question regarding the usage of surnames among Hobbits.
In particular, I am looking at the four family trees which appear in
Appendix C of LOTR, those of Baggins of Hobbiton, Took of Great
Smials, Brandybuck of Buckland and the Longfather Tree of Master
Samwise.
According to Appendix F, in particular the notes at the end of this
Appendix, the Hobbit names were "translations" of actual names in
Hobbit language to names which more closely approximate what we would
expect to find in English. I wish to disregard this point for my
purposes, as there is an equivalence between the "original" and
"translated" forms which factors itself out.
It is fairly clear what the surnames of all Hobbits mentioned in the
BAGGINS tree are, as they are explicitly stated.
However, the other trees are not so clear. For instance, the TOOK tree
doesn't *explicitly* mention the progenitor, Isengrim II, as having
the surname TOOK. We can infer it, because after all the tree shows
the TOOK line, and we know that Peregrin's surname was TOOK, and there
are other references to members of the family in the text of LOTR
(such as Bandobras TOOK).
The situation with the next tree, BRANDYBUCK of Buckland, is similar.
The progenitor, Gorhendad OLDBUCK, changed his surname to BRANDYBUCK
about 400 years before the first entry in the table, so I suppose we
can assume that Meriadoc's family as appear in this tree all have the
surname BRANDYBUCK.
The real problems come with Sam's tree. Sam and his father and
grandfather (and presumably, his siblings and uncles and aunt also)
are given the surname GAMGEE. But this seems to be a corruption (or as
Tolkien himself might have called it, a "reduction") of the surname
GAMMIDGE, which appears to be the surname of Sam's great-grandfather.
The next generation back gives it as Gamwich, and the progenitor is
simply Hamfast "of Gamwich", which is more a style than a proper
surname.
And then, what of Sam's children? Presumably they would also be
GAMGEE, but the tree seems to imply that Sam's son Frodo was given --
or took -- the surname GARDNER, and his son Holfast in turn also has
the surname GARDNER.
The COTTON family also show the same problematic characteristics. The
surname COTTON seems to come into use explicitly with Rose's
grandfather Holman, but before that the hobbits of this family just
have first names. In this case, COTTON appears to be a patronymic
taken and corrupted slightly from Holman's father, Cotman (the
aforesaid note at the end of Appendix F substantiates this, as COTTON
came from HLOTHRAN, whereas Cotman came from Hlothram).
So, is it reasonable to assume that the "GAMGEE" surname started off
as the style "of Gamwich", but then became a surname proper and
changed in the order GAMWICH -> GAMMIDGE -> GAMGEE within the space of
three generations, after which it became fixed at GAMGEE; and that
Sam's son Frodo was born a GAMGEE but acceded to the surname of
GARDNER?
This begs another question: if families such as the BAGGINSES, TOOKS
and BRANDYBUCKS had proper surnames during the twelfth century of
Shire Reckoning, but Sam's family only had a simple style which didn't
really crystallise into a set form until around 1300, would this
suggest anything about the social status of Sam's family vis-a-vis the
other families? I have seen in other threads that Sam's social status
can be considered to have been below Frodo's in Hobbit society,
because of the deference shown by Sam to Frodo.
Douglas Burbury
E-mail: dbur...@vision.net.au
http://www.vision.net.au/~dburbury/burbury.htm (Burbury family page)
http://www.vision.net.au/~dburbury/plot/gun-plot.htm (Gunpowder Plot page)
Listowner: BURBURY Mailing List Co-owner: GUNPOWDER-PLOT Mailing List