Hardbottle

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Hardbottle was a settlement in the stony northern parts of the Shire.[1]

Hardbottle was the ancestral home of the Bracegirdle Family, whose most famous daughter was Lobelia, better known by her married name of Lobelia Sackville-Baggins. After the War of the Ring, she was rescued from the Michel Delving Lockholes to find that she had lost the last of her family, her son Lotho. This news caused her to give up Bag End, and return to her family home at Hardbottle in the Northfarthing.

Etymology

The name means "rocky (hard) large dwelling", because it is excavated in or built of stone of the rocky North Farthing.[2]

The element bottle and bold (Old English botl, from which the verb "build" is derived) is a real-life English place-name element meaning "(large) dwelling".[2]

See also

References

  1. So far north, in fact, that it does not appear on the map of the Shire included in The Lord of the Rings.
  2. 2.0 2.1 J.R.R. Tolkien, "Nomenclature of The Lord of the Rings" in Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull (eds), The Lord of the Rings: A Reader's Companion, p. 771