The male members of the Baggins family generally had forenames without specific meanings, and Dudo appears to be one of these. Its similarity to modern English 'dude' (originally meaning a foppish man, later applied much more broadly) is hard to ignore. However, as a relatively modern coinage from the late nineteenth century this seems very unlikely to have been intended by Tolkien as an origin of the Hobbit-name 'Dudo'.
Tolkien's choice of name for Dudo may have been influenced by the 10th century biographer Dudo of Saint-Quentin. That connection seems even more likely given that the historical Dudo wrote a biography of Duke Rollo of Normandy, and 'Rollo' is also used as a Hobbit-name. |
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