An abbreviated form of the name 'Sackville-Baggins', used in a mildly disparaging way by Bilbo, Frodo and their friends. Had Bilbo not adopted Frodo as his heir, the S.-B.s would have inherited Bag End, and they remained ill-tempered about this matter until the time when Frodo eventually sold them the famous Hobbit-hole in III 3018.
Tolkien himself had a regular habit of breaking names down to their initials like this, and his letters are full of comparable abbreviations (such 'L. of the R.' for The Lord of the Rings, 'C.S.L.' for C.S. Lewis, and so on). This habit dated back to his schooldays at King Edward's School in Birmingham, where this seems to have been common practice. One early example is the name of an unofficial club formed by Tolkien and his schoolfriends: the Tea Club and Barrovian Society, commonly known by its own set of initials as the T.C.B.S.
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- Updated 13 July 2012
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