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Hobbits on the Map of Britain
- Author(s):
- Joe Hoffman (see profile)
- Date:
- 2022
- Subject(s):
- Digital humanities, English literature
- Item Type:
- Conference paper
- Conf. Title:
- Mythgard Mid-Atlantic Speculative Fiction Symposium
- Conf. Org.:
- Signum University
- Conf. Loc.:
- College Park, MD, USA
- Conf. Date:
- September 24-25 2016
- Tag(s):
- Family names, Geographic Information Systems, Tolkien
- Permanent URL:
- http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M6ZG79
- Abstract:
- Geographic distributions of names can be relatively static over many generations. This paper applies a mapping of English names to places in Great Britain to extract implicit correspondences between the names of hobbit families and their roles in The Lord of the Rings. J.R.R. Tolkien is found to have used family names that predominate near his childhood home in the West Midlands to connote characters close to Bilbo and Frodo, names from other parts of Britain to indicate relationships that are not so congenial, and names that do not occur widely in Britain to designate characters who are exotic or strange. The mapping is applied to the story of the Gamgee family, which exposes a story hidden in the Appendices.
- Metadata:
- xml
- Status:
- Published
- Last Updated:
- 7 months ago
- License:
- All Rights Reserved
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hobbitsonthemapofbritain.pdf