Editing Bilbo Baggins (section)

=== Name ===

{{further|Ancestry as guide to character in Tolkien's legendarium}}

[[File:Baggins vs Huggins.svg|thumb|upright=1.35|left|Baggins vs Huggins: Tolkien invented the name Baggins, which sounded like a real English surname such as Huggins or Dickens, but was a [[Huddersfield]] dialect word meaning an extra meal. He used Huggins as a [[Trolls in Middle-earth|Troll]]'s surname.<ref name="Shippey 2001 pp5-11"/>]]

The [[philologist]] and Tolkien scholar [[Tom Shippey]] notes that "Baggins" is close to the spoken words ''bæggin'', ''bægginz'' in the dialect of [[Huddersfield|Huddersfield, Yorkshire]].<ref name="Shippey 1982 p66"/> where it means a substantial meal eaten between main meals, most particularly at [[Tea (meal)|teatime in the afternoon]]; and Mr Baggins is definitely, Shippey writes, "partial to&nbsp;... his tea".<ref name="Shippey 1982 p66">{{cite book |last=Shippey |first=Tom |author-link=Tom Shippey |title=[[The Road to Middle-Earth]] |date=1982 |publisher=Grafton ([[HarperCollins]]) |isbn=0261102753 |page=66}}</ref> Tolkien worked in [[Yorkshire]] early in his career, at the [[University of Leeds]]; from 1920 he was a reader in the school of English studies, and he rose to become a full professor there.<ref name="Hickes 2010"/> More specifically, he wrote the foreword to Walter E. Haigh's 1928 ''A new glossary of the dialect of the Huddersfield district'', which included these spoken words.<ref name="Shippey 1982 p66"/><ref name="Hickes 2010">{{cite news |last=Hickes |first=Martin |title=JRR Tolkien and his overlooked connections with Leeds |url=https://www.theguardian.com/leeds/2010/sep/10/jrr-tolkien-lord-of-the-rings-leeds |work=[[The Guardian]] |date=10 September 2010 |url-status=live |archive-date=4 December 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241204075616/https://www.theguardian.com/leeds/2010/sep/10/jrr-tolkien-lord-of-the-rings-leeds}}</ref><ref name="Haigh 1928">{{cite book |last=Tolkien |first=J. R. R. |author-link=J. R. R. Tolkien |chapter=Foreword |editor-last=Haigh |editor-first=Walter E. |title=A new glossary of the dialect of the Huddersfield district |date=1928 |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |oclc=890447317}}</ref> 

In addition, "Baggins", while not a name by etymology, sounds very much like one of a class of English surnames such as Dickens, Jenkins, and Huggins. These names, Shippey notes, are formed from personal names, in the diminutive form; and Tolkien uses Huggins as the name of one of the Trolls in ''The Hobbit''.<ref name="Shippey 2001 pp5-11"/>

Tolkien's choice of the surname Baggins may be connected to the name of Bilbo's house, Bag End, also the actual name of Tolkien's aunt's farmhouse, which Shippey notes was at the bottom of a lane with no exit. This is called a "[[wikt:cul-de-sac|cul-de-sac]]"{{efn|The French words in this phrase mean "bottom-of-[a]-bag", "Bag End", but the French word for a street with no exit, Shippey observes, is ''impasse''.<ref name="Shippey 2001 pp5-11"/><ref>{{cite web |title=cul-de-sac |url=https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english-french/cul-de-sac |publisher=Collins English-French Dictionary |access-date=20 April 2020}}</ref>}} in England; Shippey describes this as "a silly phrase", a piece of "French-oriented snobbery".<ref name="Shippey 2001 pp5-11"/> 

[[File:Knole, Sevenoaks in Kent - March 2009.jpg|thumb|upright=1.35<!--fmt for low img-->|Lobelia Sackville-Baggins's desire to acquire 'Bag End', Bilbo's [[hobbit]]-hole, has been compared to [[Vita Sackville-West]]'s frustrated desire to inherit [[Knole House]] (pictured).<ref name="Dennison 2015"/>]]

Shippey observes that the socially aspiring Sackville-Bagginses have similarly attempted to "Frenchify" their family name, ''Sac[k]-ville'' = "Bag Town", as a mark of their [[bourgeois]] status.<ref name="Shippey 2001 pp5-11"/> The journalist Matthew Dennison, writing for [[St Martin's Press]], calls [[Lobelia Sackville-Baggins]] "Tolken's unmistakable nod to [[Vita Sackville-West]]", an [[aristocratic]] novelist and gardening columnist as passionately attached to her family home, [[Knole House]], which she was unable to inherit, as Lobelia was to Bag End.<ref name="Dennison 2015">{{cite web |last=Dennison |first=Matthew |date=18 August 2015  |title=Behind The Mask: Vita Sackville-West |publisher=[[St. Martin's Press]] |url=https://www.thehistoryreader.com/modern-history/vita-sackville-west/ |url-status=live |access-date=20 April 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150920103722/https://www.thehistoryreader.com/modern-history/vita-sackville-west/ |archive-date=20 September 2015}}</ref> The opposite of a bourgeois is a [[burglar]] who breaks into bourgeois houses, and in ''The Hobbit'' Bilbo is asked to become a burglar (of [[Smaug]] the dragon's lair), Shippey writes, showing that the Bagginses and the Sackville-Bagginses are "connected opposites".<ref name="Shippey 2001 pp5-11"/> He comments that the name Sackville-Baggins, for the [[Snobbery|snobbish]] branch of the Baggins family,<ref name="Shippey 1982 p66"/> is "an anomaly in Middle-earth and a failure of tone".<ref name="Shippey 2014">{{cite book |last=Shippey |first=Tom |author-link=Tom Shippey |chapter=A Cartographic Plot |year=2005 |orig-year=1982 |title=[[The Road to Middle-earth]] |publisher=[[HarperCollins]] |isbn=978-0-547-52441-2 |page=109 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qGzAAgAAQBAJ&pg=114}}</ref>