Interesting facts about The Hobbit
Especially for those who have just read or are currently reading the novel ;-)

• Bilbo Baggins was about 51½ years old at the time of The Hobbit.
• Hobbits called themselves "kuduk" in their own language.
• Tolkien meant the name Bag-End, from a hobbit's point of view, to be associated with the end of a bag, as in a 'cul-de-sac'.
• Tolkien had an aunt whose farm was nicknamed Bag-End.
• Bag-End was a luxurious hobbit-hole and was envied by many, especially Bilbo's cousins, the Sackville-Bagginses.
• Bilbo's dad was called Bungo Baggins. His mom was Primula Took. It was said he got his sensibility from his Baggins side, and his curiousness for adventure from his Took side.
• Bilbo Baggins was the first hobbit to become famous in the world outside the Shire.
• There are three main kinds of hobbit: Harfoots, Fallowhides and Stoors.
• Hobbiton was one of the oldest villages in the Shire. It was built on a hill. With Bywater, it formed a single community.
• Bilbo's hobbit-hole of Bag-End was in a neighbourhood called Under-Hill. All the holes in this neighbourhood were dug into Hobbiton Hill.
• An ancestor of Bilbo was called Bandobras Took. He was a huge hobbit (4 feet, 5 inches tall) who became famous for killing the goblin chieftan Golfimbul in the Battle of Greenfields. After this battle, Bandobras was nicknamed Bullroarer Took.
• Rivendell was a refuge for elves which was situated in a valley. It was founded by Elrond who had been fleeing a great war.
• Elrond was thousands of years old at the time of The Hobbit.
• Elrond was also known as Elrond Peredhil (Half-elven).
• "Elrond" means "Elf of the Cave" in Sindarin. As a child, when he and his twin brother Elros were rescued after fleeing a battle, he was found playing in a cave beneath a waterfall, and so received his name.
• Rivendell was a place of quiet meditation, scholarly learning, but also merriment - especially music and singing.
• Rivendell is called "Imladris" in Sindarin.
• The Misty Mountains are about 1440km long - nearly the length of New Zealand!
• The Misty Mountains were so high and steep that they were virtually impossible to climb over. There were only a few difficult passes across them.
• The large number of goblins (orcs) living in the Misty Mountains made the mountains even more dangerous!
• There was a famous, but deserted, dwarven palace carved out inside the Misty Mountains called Khazad-Dum in Dwarvish, Moria in Sindarin. It was deserted after a balrog was awoken during its excavation.
• When he was young, Tolkien thought of goblins as being like tiny elves with the sounds of their singing and dancing beautiful and magical!
• Gollum is actually a hobbit of the Stoor variety, which lived east of the shire along the banks of the great river Anduin. He is the only hobbit to ever have become evil as far as we know.
• In early editions, Gollum uses the words "my precious" to refer to himself. In later editions, after he had written The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien has Gollum using the words to refer to either himself or the ring.
• Orcs (goblins) lived all over and throughout the Misty Mountains. They were bred by an evil god-like character called Melkor as an evil version of elves. Like elves, orcs were fierce, strong warriors and did not die naturally. Most orcs hated the sun, hated beautiful things and they loved killing and destroying things.
• Orcs liked blood and raw flesh and even ate their own kind!
• Orcs were excellent at making tunnels and weapons and their medicines were extremely effective even though they tasted terrible or stung greatly.
• Orcs were mostly short, wide-bodied with bow-legs, long arms, dark faces and long fangs.
• "Beorn" is an Old English word which means "warrior". It also originally meant "bear".
• Beorn is very similar to the ancient Norse mythological character Beowulf who also ate honey (like a bear), was huge and extremely powerful.
• Beorn was the chieftan of a clan of men called "beornings" who had to guard trading routes between the Misty Mountains and Mirkwood and even further north.
• Beorn distrusted all strangers, but he especially hated orcs.
• Beorn could speak to animals.
• The name Mirkwood came from Old German and means exactly what it sounds like.
• Mirkwood was once called Greenwood the Great, but was called Mirkwood once evil creatures (giant spiders, orcs) began to move into the forest.
• The idea of an enchanted river which makes drinkers of it fall asleep might have been borrowed from old Celtic legends, particularly that of Saint Brendan.
• The episode where the dwarves try to catch up with the wood-elves is also a traditional idea with it being almost impossible to catch up with fairies unless they want you to do so.
• Tolkien never mentioned elves having pointed ears.
• Tolkien included the episode with spiders because he knew his children were frightened of spiders and he wanted to scare them when they read the story!
• "Attercop" is from Old English and means "poison-head".
• "Tomnoddy" means a stupid or foolish person.
• "Cob" and "Lob" both mean spider.
• Although the wood-elf king is not named in The Hobbit, in The Lord of the Rings he is revealed as the elf-king Thranduil.
• Wood-elves were also called sylvan elves, woodland elves, and east-elves. They were also "moriquendi", meaning they had never crossed the sea to Valinor and seen the light of Aman, a paradise of sorts.
• Thranduil is the father of Legolas, one of the main characters in The Lord of the Rings.
• Thranduil had a great love of wine most of all, as well as jewels and riches.
• Thranduil was thousands of years old at the time of the story of The Hobbit, just like Elrond.
• The Forest River was important because it was the main trading route between the Men of Lake-town and the wood-elves of Mirkwood.
• Check your version of The Hobbit! The most common of Tolkien's own pictures showing the escape from the wood-elves' palace via riding barrels down the Forest River shows a rising sun. Another picture shows this scene happening at night. The text says the barrels arrive at the huts of the raft-elves when it is dark. The nature of "raft-elves" is something of a mystery.
  
• Bilbo and the dwarves escaped the same night Thranduil was having a feast.
• "Esgaroth" was another name for Lake-town, the one used by people of the town itself and by the elves with whom they traded and the dwarves who once occupied the nearby mountain.
  
• Esgaroth was the destination for the wine barrels of the wood-elf king. Esgaroth was a major trading partner of the wood-elves.
• Esgaroth was a city of human beings, rare in that part of Middle-Earth.
• Esgaroth was built on wooden stilts, driven into the bed of the Long Lake. It was joined to the land by a bridge.
• After Smaug destroyed Esgaroth, it was rebuilt funded by gold from Smaug's treasure horde.
• The Master of Esgaroth was elected by the merchants of town and could be deposed by the, as well. It was a democracy of sorts.
• After the death of Smaug, the Master ran away with the money given to him by Bard to rebuild Esgaroth, but he later died in the deserted, hostile Waste.
• Esgaroth became rich again after it was rebuilt, trading with the wood-elves, the dwarves who moved in to Erebor (the Lonely Mountain) and the newly-restored town of Dale, which was ruled by Bard.
• The Lonely Mountain was more commonly known as Erebor (a Sindarin word).
• After he had attacked the dwarvish palace of Erebor and destroyed Dale, Smaug gathered all the treasure he could find into a huge heap. He was left alone by everyone for about 200 years before Bard shot and killed him.
• Erebor was the ancestral home of Thorin Oakenshield and his fellow dwarves related to the long-dead dwarf named Durin, King of Moria, a mighty kingdom carved out of the Misty Mountains. Durin's people had been forced to flee after they mistakenly dug up a deadly demon (a balrog thereafter refered to as "Durin's Bane"). When Smaug came along, it was the second time Thorin's people had had to flee their home!
• Erebor, as a kingdom of the dwarves, was 200 years old before Smaug destroyed it and the human town of Dale.
• The ravens of Erebor were friends of the dwarves and could speak. Roäc was a very ancient bird: his father Carc had seen Smaug descend on the mountain, and Roäc was no less than one hundred and fifty-three years old ('out of the egg', as he put it) when he met Thorin and Bilbo on the Quest of Erebor. It was Roäc who told the adventurers that Smaug was dead, and who passed between Thorin and Dáin Ironfoot in preparation for the troubles that followed.
• The thrushes of Erebor also lived for a long time. In ancient times, the people of Dale could communicate with them, but dwarves could not, even though the thrushes and dwarves were friends. The thrushes could understand common speech, called Westron. Most words that tolkien uses which are not specifically elvish, dwarvish, and so on, are in Westron, such as "Lake-town". He as author has "translated" Westron into English so that we could understand the tale.