See also
- "Guide to the Names in The Lord of the Rings"
- Hobbit (unit), a unit of weight or volume formerly used in Wales
The word hobbit was used by J. R. R. Tolkien as the name of a race of small humanoids in his fantasy fiction, the first published being The Hobbit in 1937. The Oxford English Dictionary , which added an entry for the word in the 1970s, credits Tolkien with coining it. Since then, however, it has been noted that there is prior evidence of the word, in a 19th-century list of legendary creatures. In 1971, Tolkien stated that he remembered making up the word himself, admitting that there was nothing but his "nude parole" to support the claim that he was uninfluenced by such similar words as hobgoblin . His choice may have been affected on his own admission by the title of Sinclair Lewis's 1922 novel Babbitt . The Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey has pointed out several parallels, including comparisons in The Hobbit, with the word "rabbit".
By Tolkien's own account, the coining of the name hobbit was a spontaneous flash of intuition. When he was busy grading examination papers, the word popped into his mind, not in isolation but as part of an entire sentence, which was to become the incipit of The Hobbit, "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit." [1]
Tolkien etymologized the name hobbit as the regular Modern English outcome of a hypothetical Old English *hol-bytla "hole builder". Within the linguistic fiction of The Lord of the Rings , the English etymology of Old English hol-bytlan → Modern English hobbit is the supposed translation of an "original" etymology of Rohirric kud-dukan → Westron kuduk.
On 16 January 1938, shortly after the original release of The Hobbit a letter by a Habit in the English paper The Observer asked if Tolkien's Hobbits were modelled after "'little furry men' seen in Africa by natives and … at least one scientist", and also referenced an old fairy tale called The Hobbit from 1904, but Tolkien denied using these sources as inspiration, and no trace of the African Hobbits or the fairy tale collection was ever found. Tolkien replied to this letter with:
Tolkien also acknowledged the possible unconscious connection to others' writings, particularly those of Sinclair Lewis, who wrote the novel Babbitt in 1922. In a 1966 correspondence with Professor Harry Bauer of the University of Washington, Tolkien wrote, "...I now wonder whether Sinclair Lewis's Babbitt had not some part in the invention of this name: hobbit. I read all of Sinclair Lewis's works." [2]
In 1970 the Oxford Dictionary wrote to Professor Tolkien asking for the origins of the word, as they wished to include 'Hobbit' in the dictionary. Tolkien replied:
In the event Hobbit was fully ascribed to Tolkien, as no earlier source was found.
hobbit n. one of an imaginary race of half-sized persons in stories by Tolkien; hence ~RY (5) n. [invented by J.R.R. Tolkien, Engl. writer d. 1973, and said by him to mean 'hole-builder']
— The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English
In 1971 Tolkien once again referred to his "invention":
The name hobbit for a diminutive legendary creature fits into a category of English words in hob- for such beings, based on the Middle English hobbe. These include hob, hobby, hobgoblin, Hobberdy Dick, Hobberdy, Hobbaty, hobbidy, Hobley, hobbledehoy, hobble, hobi, hobyn (small horse), hobby horse (perhaps from Hobin), Hobby (nickname for Robert), hobyah, Hob Lantern. [3] This theory was reinforced when in 1977 the Oxford English Dictionary announced that it had found the source that it supposed Tolkien to have used: J. Hardy's 1895 The Denham Tracts, Volume 2, which stated that "The whole earth was overrun with ghosts, boggles ... hobbits, hobgoblins." The Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey writes that the list was, however, of ghostly creatures without bodies, nothing like Tolkien's solid flesh-and-blood hobbits. [4]
Shippey notes a different connection, with rabbit, something that Tolkien "emphatically rejected", [4] although the word appears in The Hobbit in other characters' opinions of Bilbo in several places. [5] Bilbo compares himself to a rabbit when he is with the eagle that carries him; the eagle, too, tells Bilbo not to be "frightened like a rabbit". [4] The giant bear-man Beorn teases Bilbo and jokes that "little bunny is getting nice and fat again", while the dwarf Thorin shakes Bilbo "like a rabbit". [4]
Shippey writes that rabbit is not a native English species, but was deliberately introduced in the 13th century, and has become accepted as a local wild animal. Shippey compares this "situation of anachronism-cum-familiarity" with the lifestyle of the hobbit, giving the example of smoking "pipeweed". He argues that Tolkien did not want to write "tobacco", as it did not arrive until the 16th century, so Tolkien invented a calque made of English words. [4] Donald O'Brien notes, too, that Aragorn's description of Frodo's priceless mithril mail-shirt, "here's a pretty hobbit-skin to wrap an elven-princeling in", is a "curious echo" [5] of the English nursery rhyme "To find a pretty rabbit-skin to wrap the baby bunting in." [5]
| Feature | "Hobbit" | "Rabbit" |
|---|---|---|
| Neologism | Tolkien, 1937 | 1398 (OED) |
| Etymology | Doubtful, see text | Unknown before Middle English |
| Familiar Anachronism | Smokes "pipeweed", but tobacco did not arrive until 16th century | Introduced species but accepted as native |
| Appearance | Small, plump | (and also edible) |
| Name | Called "rabbit" by Bert the troll, eagle; called "little bunny" by Beorn | (both are common names) |
The only source known today that makes reference to hobbits in any sort of historical context is the Denham Tracts by Michael Denham. More specifically, it appears in James Hardy's edition (London: Folklore Society, 1895), vol. 2, the second part of a two-volume set compiled from Denham's publications between 1846 and 1859. The text contains a long list of sprites and bogies, based on an older list, the Discovery of Witchcraft , dated 1584, with many additions and a few repetitions. The term hobbit is listed in the context of "boggleboes, bogies, redmen, portunes, grants, hobbits, hobgoblins, brown-men, cowies, dunnies". [6]
The Tolkien researcher Mark T. Hooker catalogues a number of words with a silhouette similar to hobbit, including:
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| hobit | a type of artillery piece; howitzer is a related word |
| hōbid | Old Saxon for "head" |
| hobaid | (anglicised hobbit ) an Old Welsh measure of grain |
| hobet | variant of hobby, a small falcon species, Falco subbuteo |
| habit | In the Welsh fable Hanner Dyn, the title character's name means "half man"; the character is a personification of the force of habit |
| Hobith | The name of one of the "home gods" in The Gods of Pegāna by Lord Dunsany |
Hooker fails to find any of them "an unambiguous source for the Hobbits of Middle-earth". [7]
In the December 2003 Oxford English Dictionary newsletter, the following appears: [8]
"4. hobbit — J. R. R. Tolkien modestly claimed not to have coined this word, although the Supplement to the OED credited him with the invention of it in the absence of further evidence. It seems, however, that Tolkien was right to be cautious. It has since turned up in one of those 19th-century folklore journals, in a list of long-forgotten words for fairy-folk or little people. It seems likely that Tolkien, with his interest in folklore, read this and subconsciously registered the name, reviving it many years later in his most famous character. [Editor's note: although revision of the OED's entry for hobbit will of course take this evidence for earlier use into account, it does not yet appear in the online version of the entry.]"
As of 2024 the entry had "not yet been fully revised" in the OED Online. [9]
In 1968 United Artists acquired film and related merchandising rights to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Saul Zaentz bought the merchandising rights in 1976, vested in the Saul Zaentz Company (SZC; trade name "Middle-earth Enterprises", formerly "Tolkien Enterprises"). [10] SZC registered trademarks in various product categories for names related to elements of the novels. [11] [12]
The 1970s role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons has humanoid races approximating Tolkien's. The halfling race was called "hobbit" until changed after a 1977 lawsuit by Tolkien Enterprises in the run-up to the release of the animated film The Lord of the Rings . [13] For the same reason, Dungeons & Dragons "ents" were renamed treants; on the other hand elf, orc, and dwarf races were not renamed. [13] Although the word halfling is used in The Lord of the Rings as an exonym of hobbit, it is not proprietary to Tolkien and an earlier published citation in the OED is from The Sword of Rhiannon . [14] Later fantasy works also used halfling in a similar sense. [14]
In 2008 SZC won a World Intellectual Property Organization case against a cybersquatter for control of the domain name hobbits.com and typosquat hobbitts.com. [15]
In 2012 Warner Bros. released The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey in association with SZC. To coincide with the release, a New Zealand scientist planned a public lecture on Homo floresiensis , [16] an extinct human-like species discovered in 2003 and unofficially nicknamed "the hobbit" after its 2004 publication, because of its small stature. [17] SZC refused permission to use the word "hobbit" in publicising the lecture. [16] The same year, The Asylum tried to release a mockbuster film with the title Age of the Hobbits. [18] SZC and Warner sued, alleging Asylum's title was confusingly similar and violated its trademarks on the word "hobbit". Asylum claimed that its film was about Homo floresiensis, "uniformly referred to as 'Hobbits' in the scientific community", and also cited the word hobbit's appearance in the Denham Tracts . [19] [20] The U.S. District Court said Asylum's evidence did not invalidate the trademark's distinctiveness and granted an injunction; [11] Asylum's film was eventually released as Clash of the Empires .
Businesses to which SZC has sent cease-and-desist letters include the Hobbit Grille restaurant in Bonita Springs, Florida in 2007; [21] The Hungry Hobbit café in Birmingham in 2011; [22] a Scottish manufacturer of cylindrical timber lodges called "hobbit houses" in 2011; [23] The Hobbit pub in Southampton in 2012; [24] and an English wine importer called Giraffe and Hobbit in 2016. [25] SZC offered a cheap copyright licence to the pub in response to online criticism of perceived excessive litigiousness. [24] Hobbit Travel of Minnesota won a 2008 case against SZC on the ground of laches (unreasonable delay) as it had used the word "hobbit" in its name since 1976. [26]
Smaug is a dragon and the main antagonist in J. R. R. Tolkien's 1937 novel The Hobbit, his treasure and the mountain he lives in being the goal of the quest. Powerful and fearsome, he invaded the Dwarf kingdom of Erebor 171 years prior to the events described in the novel. A group of thirteen dwarves mounted a quest to take the kingdom back, aided by the wizard Gandalf and the hobbit Bilbo Baggins. In The Hobbit, Thorin describes Smaug as "a most specially greedy, strong and wicked worm".
Beorn is a character created by J. R. R. Tolkien, and part of his Middle-earth legendarium. He appears in The Hobbit as a "skin-changer", a man who could assume the form of a great black bear. His descendants or kinsmen, a group of Men known as the Beornings, dwell in the upper Vales of Anduin, between Mirkwood and the Misty Mountains, and are counted among the Free Peoples of Middle-earth who oppose Sauron's forces during the War of the Ring. Like the powerful medieval heroes Beowulf and Bödvar Bjarki, whose names both mean "bear", he exemplifies the Northern courage that Tolkien made a central virtue in The Lord of the Rings.
In the philologist and fantasy author J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth fiction, a warg is a particularly large and evil kind of wolf that could be ridden by orcs. He derived the name and characteristics of his wargs by combining meanings and myths from Old Norse and Old English. In Norse mythology, a vargr is a wolf, especially the wolf Fenrir that destroyed the god Odin in the battle of Ragnarök, and the wolves Sköll and Hati, Fenrir's children, who perpetually chase the Sun and Moon. In Old English, a wearh is an outcast who may be strangled to death.
Hobbits are a fictional race of people in the novels of J. R. R. Tolkien. About half average human height, Tolkien presented hobbits as a variety of humanity, or close relatives thereof. Occasionally known as halflings in Tolkien's writings, they live barefooted, and traditionally dwell in homely underground houses which have windows, built into the sides of hills, though others live in houses. Their feet have naturally tough leathery soles and are covered on top with curly hair.
Bilbo Baggins is the title character and protagonist of J. R. R. Tolkien's 1937 novel The Hobbit, a supporting character in The Lord of the Rings, and the fictional narrator of many of Tolkien's Middle-earth writings. The Hobbit is selected by the wizard Gandalf to help Thorin and his party of Dwarves reclaim their ancestral home and treasure, which has been seized by the dragon Smaug. Bilbo sets out in The Hobbit timid and comfort-loving and, through his adventures, grows to become a useful and resourceful member of the quest.
Bag End is the underground dwelling of the Hobbits Bilbo and Frodo Baggins in J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy novels The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. From there, both Bilbo and Frodo set out on their adventures, and both return there, for a while. As such, Bag End represents the familiar, safe, comfortable place which is the antithesis of the dangerous places that they visit. It forms one end of the main story arcs in the novels, and since the Hobbits return there, it also forms an end point in the story circle in each case.
Halflings are a fictional race found in some fantasy works. They tend to be depicted as physically similar to humans, except about half as tall and not as stocky as the similarly sized dwarves. Halflings are often depicted as having slightly pointed ears along with leathery-soled feet which are covered with curly hair. They tend to be portrayed as stealthy and lucky. The term is derived for the word used in Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Northern England for a child who is not yet fully grown. Halflings are found in many fantasy novels and games, including as an alternative term for hobbits in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth and as playable humanoid races in Dungeons & Dragons.
In J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth, the Eagles or Great Eagles, are immense birds that are sapient and can speak. The Great Eagles resemble actual eagles, but are much larger. Thorondor is said to have been the greatest of all birds, with a wingspan of 30 fathoms. Elsewhere, the Eagles have varied in nature and size both within Tolkien's writings and in later adaptations.
Trolls are fictional characters in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth, and feature in films and games adapted from his novels. They are portrayed as monstrously large humanoids of great strength and poor intellect. In The Hobbit, like the dwarf Alviss of Norse mythology, they must be below ground before dawn or turn to stone, whereas in The Lord of the Rings they are able to face daylight.
"The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late" is J. R. R. Tolkien's imagined original song behind the nursery rhyme "Hey Diddle Diddle ", invented by back-formation. It was first published in Yorkshire Poetry magazine in 1923, and was reused in extended form in the 1954–55 The Lord of the Rings as a song sung by Frodo Baggins in the Prancing Pony inn. The extended version was republished in the 1962 collection The Adventures of Tom Bombadil.
Balin is a fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien's world of Middle-earth. A Dwarf, he is an important supporting character in The Hobbit, and is mentioned in The Fellowship of the Ring. As the Fellowship travel through the underground realm of Moria, they find Balin's tomb and the Dwarves' book of records, which tells how Balin founded a colony there, becoming Lord of Moria, and that the colony was overrun by orcs.
"The Road Goes Ever On" is a title that encompasses several walking songs that J. R. R. Tolkien wrote for his Middle-earth legendarium. Within the stories, the original song was composed by Bilbo Baggins and recorded in The Hobbit. Different versions of it also appear in The Lord of the Rings, along with some similar walking songs.
"The Council of Elrond" is the second chapter of Book 2 of J. R. R. Tolkien's bestselling fantasy work, The Lord of the Rings, which was published in 1954–1955. It is the longest chapter in that book at some 15,000 words, and critical for explaining the power and threat of the One Ring, for introducing the final members of the Company of the Ring, and for defining the planned quest to destroy it. Contrary to the maxim "Show, don't tell", the chapter consists mainly of people talking; the action is, as in an earlier chapter "The Shadow of the Past", narrated, largely by the Wizard Gandalf, in flashback. The chapter parallels the far simpler Beorn chapter in The Hobbit, which similarly presents a culture-clash of modern with ancient. The Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey calls the chapter "a largely unappreciated tour de force". The Episcopal priest Fleming Rutledge writes that the chapter brings the hidden narrative of Christianity in The Lord of the Rings close to the surface.
The Shire is a region of J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional Middle-earth, described in The Lord of the Rings and other works. The Shire is an inland area settled exclusively by hobbits, the Shire-folk, largely sheltered from the goings-on in the rest of Middle-earth. It is in the northwest of the continent, in the region of Eriador and the Kingdom of Arnor.
The Hobbit is a pub in the Bevois Valley area of Southampton, England. Previously the Portswood Hotel, it was named after J. R. R. Tolkien's book The Hobbit in 1989. In 2012 the pub was involved in a legal dispute with Middle-earth Enterprises, a company owned by film producer Saul Zaentz, over its use of the name.
Clash of the Empires is an American fantasy/adventure film produced by The Asylum and directed by Joseph Lawson. It stars Christopher Judge, Bai Ling and Sun Korng.
England and Englishness are represented in multiple forms within J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth writings; it appears, more or less thinly disguised, in the form of the Shire and the lands close to it; in kindly characters such as Treebeard, Faramir, and Théoden; in its industrialised state as Isengard and Mordor; and as Anglo-Saxon England in Rohan. Lastly, and most pervasively, Englishness appears in the words and behaviour of the hobbits, both in The Hobbit and in The Lord of the Rings.
The Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary is a 2006 book by three editors of the Oxford English Dictionary, Peter Gilliver, Jeremy Marshall and Edmund Weiner. It examines J. R. R. Tolkien's brief period working as a lexicographer with the OED after World War I, traces his use of philology as it is apparent in his writings, and in particular in his legendarium, and finally examines in detail over 100 words that he used, developed or invented.
J. R. R. Tolkien derived the characters, stories, places, and languages of Middle-earth from many sources. Shakespeare's influence on Tolkien was substantial, despite Tolkien's professed dislike of the playwright. Tolkien disapproved in particular of Shakespeare's devaluation of elves, and was deeply disappointed by the prosaic explanation of how Birnam Wood came to Dunsinane Hill in Macbeth. Tolkien was influenced especially by Macbeth and A Midsummer Night's Dream, and he used King Lear for "issues of kingship, madness, and succession". He arguably drew on several other plays, including The Merchant of Venice, Henry IV, Part 1, and Love's Labour's Lost, as well as Shakespeare's poetry, for numerous effects in his Middle-earth writings. The Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey suggests that Tolkien may even have felt a kind of fellow-feeling with Shakespeare, as both men were rooted in the county of Warwickshire.
The task of constructing The Lord of the Rings was long and complex, lasting from its start in 1937, soon after the success of J. R. R. Tolkien's children's book The Hobbit, until the novel's publication in 1954–1955. Tolkien began with no idea where the story would go, and made several false starts before the tale of the One Ring emerged. The names of the characters, including the protagonists, of The Lord of the Rings changed many times. Tolkien stopped writing repeatedly, sometimes for years at a time. Inspiration, when it came, was based on practical work with maps, names, and languages that Tolkien incorporated in the novel. He illustrated places described in the text, updating drawings and text together until he felt they were correct.
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