Okay.
In this respect – to go back to Esty’s original question – I am most definitely a hobbit. I can look at any family tree, no matter how complicated, and immediately take in all its details and understand all the relationships involved. Same as an electrician looking at a circuit board. I had no idea that this was an unusual skill until I realised that most of the English people around me can’t do it. It’s cultural or genetic programming, I suppose.
There’s a whole area of language linked to kinship, too. ‘Cousin/uncle/aunt’ is far too general. You would be a mother-brother (móður-bróðir) grandfather-sister (afa-systir) or sibling-children (systkynabörn).
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happen to think Hobbits maintained records of ancestry mostly for purposes of determining inheritance
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I don't agree about this, I think
Ka is spot on with her ideas of Numenorean and hobbits family interest.
Hobbits I think are like Icelandic geneaologists, it’s got bugger all to do with inheritance - it’s all about knowing who you are and where you come from. Your extended family is a part of your identity – it’s about how you define yourself and also how others define you. You meet someone for the first time, you might view them with circumspection, and then you realise they are so-and-so’s first cousin or grandchild or whatever, and everything falls into place and calms down.
Also, claims of kinship are sacrosanct. (I should know, I’ve just my father’s first cousins staying for four days and I couldn’t even remember what one of them was called, when they first arrived, I had to text my mum.
)
I can also really relate to Frodo’s friendship with his cousins Merry and Pippin. I think the easy camaraderie of the hobbits of the Fellowship comes from kinship – not the claustrophobic closeness of siblings, but the looser, friendlier and more tolerant bonds of cousinship. I go on holiday all the time with my cousins and their families, but not so much with my brothers.