The name 'Theobald' has its origins in Anglo-Saxon théod 'people' and bald 'bold', suggesting a hero or leader of a people. The element théod is also found in the ancestral language of the Rohirrim (represented by Old English), as in Théoden 'leader of the people' or Éothéod, the 'horse-people' of the upper Anduin. Indeed, it seems plausible that the Hobbit-name 'Theobald' had its origins in the time when the Hobbits and the Men of the Éothéod lived near to one another in the Vales of Anduin, though by Theobald Bolger's time those days belonged to the far distant past.