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appendix f 1485
Men near whom, or among whom, they lived. Thus they quickly
adopted the Common Speech after they entered Eriador, and
by the time of their settlement at Bree they had already begun
to forget their former tongue. This was evidently a Mannish
language of the upper Anduin, akin to that of the Rohirrim;
though the southern Stoors appear to have adopted a language
related to Dunlendish before they came north to the Shire. 1
Of these things in the time of Frodo there were still some
traces left in local words and names, many of which closely
resembled those found in Dale or in Rohan. Most notable were
the names of days, months, and seasons; several other words of
the same sort (such as mathom and smial) were also still in
common use, while more were preserved in the place-names of
Bree and the Shire. The personal names of the Hobbits were
also peculiar and many had come down from ancient days.
Hobbit was the name usually applied by the Shire-folk to all
their kind. Men called them Halflings and the Elves Periannath.
The origin of the word hobbit was by most forgotten. It seems,
however, to have been at first a name given to the Harfoots by
the Fallohides and Stoors, and to be a worn-down form of a
word preserved more fully in Rohan: holbytla ‘hole-builder’.
of other races
Ents. The most ancient people surviving in the Third Age were
the Onodrim or Enyd. Ent was the form of their name in the
language of Rohan. They were known to the Eldar in ancient
days, and to the Eldar indeed the Ents ascribed not their own
language but the desire for speech. The language that they had
made was unlike all others: slow, sonorous, agglomerated, repetitive,
indeed long-winded; formed of a multiplicity of vowelshades
and distinctions of tone and quality which even the
lore-masters of the Eldar had not attempted to represent in writing.
They used it only among themselves; but they had no need
to keep it secret, for no others could learn it.
1 The Stoors of the Angle, who returned to Wilderland, had already
adopted the Common Speech; but Déagol and Sméagol are names in the
Mannish language of the region near the Gladden.