Why Genealogies?

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by Legate of Amon Lanc

A patriotic note: not just Russians. I believe all the Slavic nations have something like that...

There is also Ni/Nic in Irish Gaelic, the female equivalents to O/Mac, and now being used more widely by revivalists. If you look on any random Irish folk music album you'll probably find a woman using this.

I have a feeling there's also a Welsh version of this but I'll have to dig out my surnames books.

[Lalaith]

Okay.
In this respect – to go back to Esty’s original question – I am most definitely a hobbit. I can look at any family tree, no matter how complicated, and immediately take in all its details and understand all the relationships involved. Same as an electrician looking at a circuit board. I had no idea that this was an unusual skill until I realised that most of the English people around me can’t do it. It’s cultural or genetic programming, I suppose.
There’s a whole area of language linked to kinship, too. ‘Cousin/uncle/aunt’ is far too general. You would be a mother-brother (móður-bróðir) grandfather-sister (afa-systir) or sibling-children (systkynabörn).

happen to think Hobbits maintained records of ancestry mostly for purposes of determining inheritance

I don't agree about this, I think Ka is spot on with her ideas of Numenorean and hobbits family interest.
Hobbits I think are like Icelandic geneaologists, it’s got bugger all to do with inheritance - it’s all about knowing who you are and where you come from. Your extended family is a part of your identity – it’s about how you define yourself and also how others define you. You meet someone for the first time, you might view them with circumspection, and then you realise they are so-and-so’s first cousin or grandchild or whatever, and everything falls into place and calms down.

Also, claims of kinship are sacrosanct. (I should know, I’ve just my father’s first cousins staying for four days and I couldn’t even remember what one of them was called, when they first arrived, I had to text my mum.)

I can also really relate to Frodo’s friendship with his cousins Merry and Pippin. I think the easy camaraderie of the hobbits of the Fellowship comes from kinship – not the claustrophobic closeness of siblings, but the looser, friendlier and more tolerant bonds of cousinship. I go on holiday all the time with my cousins and their families, but not so much with my brothers.

[Rumil]

Hi Lal and all,

good thread indeed, the Welsh system was 'Ap' for son-of and 'Verch' for daughter-of, though it was apparently ia bit more tricky at times -

Many idiosyncrasies exist in Welsh naming patterns: Patronymics, for example (see Gwynedd Roots No. 32) and the following pattern.

As an example of the old-fashioned habits of Beddgelert in my early days, I may mention the way in which wives and children used to be named. The custom was that the wife never took her husband’s family name, but retained the one she had as a spinster. Thus, my grandmother on my mother’s side was called Ellen HUGHES, daughter of Hugh Hughes of Gwastad Annas. The name of her husband, my grandfather was William PRICHARD, son of Richard WILLIAM, of the Efail Newydd. The name of their eldest son, my uncle (brother to my mother) was Hugh HUGHES and the second son’s name was Richard WILLIAMS. The mother had the privilege of naming her first born after her own family, in case it was a boy; but if it happened to be a girl, she took her name from the father’s family, for which reason my mother’s maiden name was Catherine WILLIAMS. This remained her name to the day of her death, and the old people of Beddgelert persisted in calling me, so long as I was at home, William PRICHARD, after my grandfather, as I was my mother’s eldest child.

Another variation of the above naming custom was to name the eldest son after his paternal grandfather, and the eldest daughter after her paternal grandmother. The second son and daughter took the names of their maternal grandparents and the third son and daughter the names of their parents.

Of course this a bit much for the English to understand so Ap-Rhys went to Price, Ap-William went to Williams etc.

[Lalwendë]

Let me bump this one up, seeing as I've been almost completely immersed in family tree research for some time now and it interests me...

I was thinking about exactly how Hobbits would even begin to go about family tree research, or if they simply enjoyed reading family trees that were already drawn up. Because just looking up a completed family tree is a very different thing to actually doing the lengthy and very expensive research yourself.

To compile a tree, a Hobbit would need lots of accurate records to look up. There must have been some kind of administration in The Shire given that there is a Mayor and it is divided up into regions, but did they register events such as births/marriages/deaths in any way? Did they take part in official ceremonies for these and thus leave some kind of 'parish record'? Or did someone simply record events in a communal book that had been held and annotated by previous generations? Hmmmm...

I do think that a primary concern for Hobbits was inheritance, given that 'headships' of families seemed to be inheritable (even if they didn't necessarily come with any land - see the next head of the Baggins family after Bilbo and Frodo left) and also that in some families they seem to have been restricted to males only. The Baggins 'headship' bypassed several females with a strong claim and went to males only, even if they were distant on the tree, whereas the Sackville line could obviously pass through a female branch of the tree (Otho inherited his Sackville name from his mother).

I say that objectively, as someone who is knee deep in my own research and neither expecting nor hoping to find anyone who was anything more than 'umble. I find pure pleasure in this, and I'm certain Hobbits would too, plus enjoy knowing which neighbours were distant family. But they clearly had important 'legal' (maybe not legal in the formal sense but certainly in the sense of following established family custom) reasons to pursue family history too.

Side note - did they have lawyers in The Shire? What a horrible thought...

As for whether Tolkien himself was interested in this, I wonder whether he was ever successful. If so, then he must have visited a lot of parishes and looked through dozens of dusty books of records. It's quite strange to think that I could sit down now and trace his family tree back through the 19thC just from my computer and it would have taken him months, even years, to achieve that.

[Oddwen]

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

To compile a tree, a Hobbit would need lots of accurate records to look up. There must have been some kind of administration in The Shire given that there is a Mayor and it is divided up into regions, but did they register events such as births/marriages/deaths in any way? Did they take part in official ceremonies for these and thus leave some kind of 'parish record'? Or did someone simply record events in a communal book that had been held and annotated by previous generations? Hmmmm...

I do think that a primary concern for Hobbits was inheritance, given that 'headships' of families seemed to be inheritable (even if they didn't necessarily come with any land - see the next head of the Baggins family after Bilbo and Frodo left) and also that in some families they seem to have been restricted to males only. The Baggins 'headship' bypassed several females with a strong claim and went to males only, even if they were distant on the tree, whereas the Sackville line could obviously pass through a female branch of the tree (Otho inherited his Sackville name from his mother).

Well, we know that Bilbo's will needed seven signatures in red ink to be legal, that there makes me think that there was some sort of strict filing system in place.

[Estelyn Telcontar]

At the end of the Hobbit, Bilbo finds his possessions being auctioned by "Messrs Grubb, Grubb, and Burrowes", which certainly sounds like a legal firm. His return caused a "legal bother", so the Shire had lawyers at any rate.

[Lalwendë]

Maybe the lawyers had some responsibility for record keeping? There was obviously some form of administration but not a 'state' as there was little need for control (few external threats and abundance of resources).

It all adds to my long-held impression that The Shire is a very different and much more modern place than the rest of Middle-earth. Rohan is still operating like an Anglo-Saxon society with portable wealth and something like 'wapentakes'; Gondor is like a feudal city state in stasis; and the Elves in some kind of pre-historic society (all very debatable of course - this is just a quick glance at the contrasts). While The Shire has a postal service, 'museums', lawyers, complex inheritance customs, developed trade, an elected Mayor, even a rudimentary police force. It always reminds me of a highly idealised view of Edwardian England without the heavy industry or intense poverty...I digress....

The position of Thain was inherited, and though the Thain wasn't an 'aristocrat' by any means, and more like a titular steward in control of any military needs, no doubt it was still an honoured position and it would be important to keep track of who was in the line of succession. Pippin had sisters who were older to the best of my knowledge, so it looks to have been inherited through males only - another reason why they would need to keep an eye on the family tree!