[jallanite]

Originally Posted by Mithalwen

So with Hobbits benefitting from several generations of settled farming tending closer to four, it means that in and around the Shire and Bree most inhabitants are likely to be between 3"6 and 5"6 and with dwarves around bridging the still noticeable division between big and little, it is too much of continuum for a term such as halfling to be meaningful.

But the name Halfling was coined when those who were later known as Hobbits still lived in the upper Vales of the Anduin, very far from Bree. Presumably the name Halfling was meaningful to those who invented the name, whether the Sindarin rendering Perian or the Westron rendering Banakil or a rendering in some other Elvish or Mannish tongue was the oldest rendering. Presumably those who first coined the name and those who continued its use felt that the name was useful for application to a people who were close to being half their size, even smaller than the Dwarves.

One reason the later Hobbit may have disliked the name halfling is that they saw it as a gross exaggeration of their smallness. But banakil and perian remained the name of this people in standard Westron and in Sindarin. And both meant ‘halfling’, regardless that the term was not precisely suitable.

Originally Posted by Alfirin

Wouldn't that mean that to a Harfoot or a Fallowhide, Stoors (who could grow beards) would be considered one of the Big Folk, as opposed to one of their own?

Tolkien never writes that any Stoors could grow beards. In his Prologue he writes only:

But they [the hobbits of Eastfarthing] were well known to be Stoors in a large part of their blood, as indeed was shown by the down that many grew on their chins. No Harfoots or Fallohide had any trace of a beard.

Some down on the chin is hardly comparable to the full and luxurious beards of the Dwarves or the beards that most Men could grow.

On a related note, would I be right in that, much as the Stoors were somewhat more hairy than the Harfoots (if they can grow beards, the rest of their hair is likely to be thicker and more plentiful as well)

Maybe, and maybe not. Tolkien only mentions that some of the Stoor-descended hobbits at the end of the Third Age had down on their chins while other hobbits had no trace of a beard. This suggestion is at the best only possible, but not provable.

I amit this is probably being colored by both them seeming to be "Elvish hobbits" (in the same way Stoors are "Mannish Hobbits") and of course the modern meaning of the word "fallow" (Tolkien being far better versed in language than I, I suppose he could have taken the word "fallow" from some other unrelated root or meant it in a now archaic meaning I am not aware of)

From J. R. R. Tolkien’s “Nomenclature of The Lord of the Rings”, currently available in Hammond and Scull’s The Lord of the Rings: A reader’s companion, pages 750–82:

Fallohide This has given difficulty. It should if possible be translated, since it is meant to represent a name with a meaning in CS, though one devised in the past and so containing archaic elements. It is made of E. fallow + hide (cognates of Ger. falb and Haut) and means ‘paleskin’. It is archaic since fallow ‘pale, yellowish’ is not now in use, except in fallow deer; and hide is no longer applied to human skin (except as a transference back from its modern use of animal hides, used for leather). But this element of archaism need not be imitated. See Marcho and Blanco. See also note on relation of special Hobbit words to the language of Rohan [in Appendix F, p. 1136, III: 414].

The element fallow ‘brownish yellow’ used here derives from Old English fealo ‘dull-coloured, yellow, yellowish red, brown’ from the Indo-European base *pel- ‘dark-coloured, grey’. It is not at all related to fallow ‘land plowed but left unsown’ from Old English fealg ‘harrow’ from Indo-European *polkā- ‘something turned’ from another base *pel- ‘to turn’.