I'm coming late to this thread and I wish I wasn't as there have been so many interesting ideas posted I'd have loved to have discussed. But anyway, I've two things to post about now, some more linguistics and my own response to The Shire.
Baggins as a name fascinates me. In The Penguin Dictionary of Surnames (I've used this book as a reference in the Chapter 5 thread too!) it does not appear, but this does:
Quote:
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Bagg(e) - money bag, pack, bundle - Middle English.
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This is interesting as it ties in with the alleged large amount of money and treasure that Bilbo is supposed to have hoarded in Bag End. In The Hobbit, Bilbo is also said to be from a well-to-do family. Perhaps the name was derived from this monetary origin. What interests me is that Baggin is a dialect term for food, specifically for the food which you take to work with you. It is a word I grew up with and still use. I don't know if it was used in Tolkien's part of England, but it may have been used by farmers, as that is my own background. If so, then Tolkien may have chosen it as a name to play on hobbits' love of food. I can't find any origins for the name Bilbo, but I know several people who have Bilboe as a surname.
Now, earlier in the thread there was much discussion about how readers react to The Shire. I grew up in an isolated English agricultural area, surrounded by a lot of older people, and The Shire was instantly recognisable to me as 'home'. The rural landscape was very vivid, including the village pubs, hothouses of gossip for the old men in my own village (there was even an Eagle & Child nearby). Hobbit holes were like the cottages, small and low-ceilinged with colourful gardens. The Gaffer reminded me of my own grandfather; his world centred around his garden and the growing of potatoes and cabbages (his Savoys were in great demand), and if he went to the pub it was to talk and hear news. Characters such as the Mayor make me think of parish councillors, very important (to themselves at least) but in the great scheme of things, doing little apart from opening fetes and issuing newsletters.
I react to The Shire on a very personal level, feeling the same sadness as the hobbits do on leaving it. Now I am far away from where I grew up I find myself longing for my own 'Shire', although I know that it is now very different, and much like anywhere else, filled with commuters instead of rural characters. The Shire is almost an emblem of this longing for the past, the urge to go back to a place that is still there, but also not there. I'm sure Tolkien himself intended this, as he too went through the feeling that he had lost an idyllic childhood world.
On a final note, someone earlier asked whether there are any people who are really like hobbits, being small with hairy feet - they haven't seen my family.
