Editing Bilbo Baggins (section)

=== Genealogy ===
{{further|Tolkien's Middle-earth family trees}}

The Tolkien scholar [[Jason Fisher]] notes that Tolkien stated that hobbits were extremely "clannish" and had strong "predilections for [[genealogy]]".<ref name="Drout 2007">{{cite encyclopedia |last=Fisher |first=Jason |author-link=Jason Fisher |editor=Drout, Michael D.C. |editor-link=Michael D. C. Drout |title=Family Trees |encyclopedia=[[The J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia]] |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=B0loOBA3ejIC&pg=PA188 |year=2007 |publisher=[[Taylor & Francis]] |isbn=978-0-415-96942-0 |pages=188–189}}</ref> Accordingly, Tolkien's decision to include the [[Tolkien's Middle-earth family trees|Baggins and other hobbit family trees]] in ''Lord of the Rings''<ref group=T>{{harvnb|Tolkien|1955|loc="Appendix&nbsp;C – Baggins of [[Hobbiton]]"}}</ref> gives the book, in Fisher's view, a strongly "hobbitish perspective".<ref name="Drout 2007"/> The tree also, he notes, serves to show Bilbo's and Frodo's connections and familial characteristics, including that Bilbo was both "a Baggins and a Took".<ref name="Drout 2007"/> Fisher observes that Bilbo is, like [[Aragorn]]: a "distillation of the best of two families"; he notes that in the game ''The Quest of Erebor'', Gandalf is given the (non-Tolkien) lines "So naturally, thinking over the hobbits that I knew, I said to myself, 'I want a dash of the [adventurous] Took ... and I want a good foundation of the stolider sort, a Baggins perhaps.' That pointed at once to Bilbo".<ref name="Drout 2007"/>

The Tolkien critic [[Tom Shippey]] notes that Tolkien was very interested in such names, describing Shire names at length in ''The Lord of the Rings'' "Appendix F".<ref group=T name="Appendix F2">{{harvnb|Tolkien|1955|loc="Appendix F", 2, "On Translation"}}</ref> One category was the names that meant nothing to the hobbits "in their daily language", like Bilbo and Bungo; a few of these, like Otho and Drogo in the family tree, were "by accident, the same as modern English names".<ref name="Shippey 2001">{{cite book |last=Shippey |first=Tom |author-link=Tom Shippey |date=2001 |title=[[J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century]] |publisher=[[HarperCollins]] |isbn=978-0261-10401-3 |pages=182–183}}</ref>