Brockhouse Family

Hobbits from the Brockhouse family were definitely to be found in the Bree-land, but the extent of the connection of the Brockhouses with the Shire is open to some debate. In early drafts of The Lord of the Rings, the Brockhouses at Bilbo Baggins' Farewell Party are said to have travelled there from Combe near Bree, and on that basis they may not have had a home in the Shire at all. It's notable, however, that this reference does not appear in the published text, and we also know of at least one Brockhouse - Sapphira - who married into the Boffin family of Shire-hobbits. In combination, these facts imply that there was a branch of the family (or perhaps a separate family that shared the same name) living in the Shire in the later Third Age.

The name 'Brockhouse' comes from Old English brocc hús, referring to the interconnected tunnels made by badgers as a home, more usually called a 'sett'. As the name for a family of Hobbits 'Brockhouse' connects the idea of these badger tunnels with the holes made by Hobbits.

In real surnames, the element 'Brock' can have different interpretations (for example, it sometimes means 'brook') but Tolkien is explicit that he intends it to mean 'badger' in the name 'Brockhouse'. The same element appears in the place-name 'Brockenbores', which in fact has a derivation very close to 'Brockhouse'. It might be tempting to see a connection between the family of Brockhouse and the village of Brockenbores, but we have no evidence for such a connection beyond the similarity of their names.