[Kalimac]

Estelyn - sehr toll! (Sorry, had to say it [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]).

All this discussion reminds me of Bierce's "Devil's Dictionary" - at least, the entry which runs:

BELLADONNA, n. In Italian a beautiful lady, in English a deadly poison. A striking example of the essential identity of the two tongues.

To be honest, though, I think that the fact that Belladonna shares her name with a poisonous flower probably doesn't have much significance - I'd suspect that Tolkien chose it large because it's pretty and it's a flower-name - and those are both things that the hobbits leaned towards when naming their daughters. The reason I'd suspect this is that in a society where a lot of children are named after flowers, a lot of them will end up being named (intentionally or not) after something poisonous, simply because an awful lot of flowers are poisonous or otherwise bad for the health - if not to humans, than to animals.

If you look at the Baggins and Took family trees, one sweep through will give you Belladonna, Pimpernel, Pervinca (a variation on Periwinkle), Lobelia, Myrtle, Lily, Poppy, and Pansy. You wouldn't want to ingest any of these things, and some of them can have pretty nasty effects, though Belladonna is one of the stronger ones (several of these plants can kill animals). Even some kinds of marigold have to be watched out for.

Now, I'll grant you that Lobelia's name is probably not an accident [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img] - but she's a much bigger player in the books than Belladonna is - Belladonna is dead before "The Hobbit" opens, and is only mentioned three times, and those briefly. I'd venture to guess that initially Tolkien put about as much effort into naming her as he did to naming Poppy, Pervinca, Pimpernel and so forth.

Anyway, that's what I'd guess it is. Besides, reading interpretations into people's names can get a bit scary after a while. Surely the fact that Pippin's wife is named Diamond doesn't mean that she's cold and hard, does it? Surely not - at least, I hope not!