Again I find this section of the Appendices very interesting, and like Aiwendil and Formendacil I have a liking for charts and maps and lists. So much so that I've been told I learned to read from looking at maps when I was very young. I've tried to trace my own family tree, but when it became more and more complicated I did not go any further as I realised how much work would be involved. I used to enjoy drawing up imaginary genealogies as a child and have a notebook somewhere which I used to write them up in; then I would make up stories based on them. Maybe I should've got out more.
Looking at the Baggins family tree it is clear that if inheritance was taken through the male line (through primogeniture) then the Sackville-Bagginses were the rightful heirs to the Baggins estate. Using primogeniture again, Frodo would have been the next but one Baggins in line (after Porto Baggins). Allowing female Hobbits into the line of inheritance, then Sancho Proudfoot was the heir after the Sackvile-Bagginses. Frodo is also the last of the male Bagginses of Hobbiton as shown on this family tree. We don't know if there were other Baggins families, but as far as we can tell from this, the name dies out with Frodo. There is Porto Baggins but he seems to have remained a bachelor also.
Apparently there is a 'joke' in the choice of the name Sackville-Baggins, in that Tolkien was satirising the British intellectual elite or Bloomsbury set (I wonder if he was particularly picking on Vita Sackville-West?). It is unusual to have a double-barrelled surname in The Shire, and I wondered how it might have come about, but Tolkien did explain it. From the Scull/Hammond Reader's Companion, there is an interesting extract from Tolkien's letters:
Quote:
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In other great families the headship might pass through the daughter of the deceased to his eldest grandson (irrespective of the daughter's age). This latter custom was usual in families of more recent origin, without ancient records or ancestral mansions. In such cases the heir ( if he accepted the courtesy title) took the name of his mother's family - though he also reatined that of his father's family also (placed second).
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So taking this as custom in The Shire, Longo Baggins must have married an important person in the figure of Camellia Sackville; she must have been of 'great' family and have passed the headship on to Otho. Interestingly, Longo's brother Bingo (another of Bilbo's uncles) also 'married well', as he married Chica Chubb, and started a Chubb-Baggins line - cut short when Poppy marries a Bolger.
If The Shire is in any way representative of English society then this is fascinatingly accurate in its depiction of middle-class social values and concerns. Note that the taking on of double-barrelled names is quite clearly linked with 'new money' while what Tolkien has said in his letter above must also mean that 'old families' such as Tooks and Brandybucks (the aristocracy of The Shire) would not countenance such a thing, a female heir would retain her own name and so would her offspring (much like our own Queen
). I wonder if Lotho upgraded from taking the Daily Mail to taking the Telegraph once he got his hands on Bag End?