LotR -- Book 1 - Chapter 01 - A Long-Expected Party

[Pitchwife]

Legate -

Please explain to me, why is someone called Twofoot? I would understand if a hobbit who lost one leg would be called Onefoot (though it won't be a family name but only his personal nickname), but why Twofoot? Harfoot, Puddifoot, why not, but there is either something I don't understand or we have had a wrong images in our heads all the time and most Hobbits in fact have three legs.

I'd imagine it refers to height: either ol' Daddy himself or one of his ancestors was uncommonly short even for a Hobbit (possibly not literally two feet - maybe just a little under three, and 'Twofoot' was a humorous exaggeration). In German, at least (and for all that I know in English, too), many family names - such as aren't patronymics or refer to the owner's profession - historically started as personal nicknames that became hereditary. Tolkien's own family name is a nice example, being derived from the German adjective tollkühn = 'foolhardy'. I'd suppose one of the Prof's ancestors (let's call him John) earned the name of 'John the Foolhardy' by his rash and daring temperament; now that person's son would be called 'Christopher Foolhardy' in shorthand for 'Christopher, John the Foolhardy's son', and thus the nickname would be passed on to future generations, although few of them, if any, displayed the character trait that inspired the name in the first place.