hobbit: [20] The name of these small furry-footed human-like creatures was invented by their creator, J.R.R. Tolkien, and first appeared in public in The Hobbit (1937). It probably simply occurred to him as a pleasing- and appropriatesounding name, but with typical linguistic thoroughness he later worked up a detailed etymological rationale for it: in their own language, he claimed, hobbits were called kuduk; this was a worn-down version of an original kûd-dûkan, which meant literally ‘holedweller’; in Old English, ‘hole-dweller’ would have been holbytla, which in modern English could plausibly have become eroded to hobbit.
