It might be imagined that the Boffin family name was influenced by the common slang word 'boffin' for a scientist or inventor. Actually, the dating for such an association doesn't support the possibility, with the slang term coming into use late in the Second World War, some years after Tolkien apparently created the name. (Dating the first appearance of the Hobbit family name is difficult, but it seems to belong to texts from 1938, several years too early to be influenced by the scientific 'boffin'.)
In fact we have no evidence the name was influenced by any external source, but if it did have an outside inspiration, that inspiration might have come from the works of Charles Dickens. There is a Boffin family in Dickens' Our Mutual Friend, though if this literally source gave rise to Tolkien's Boffins, he never recorded the fact. |
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