A family of Shire-hobbits, known to exist some two centuries before the War of the Ring, but otherwise almost entirely obscure. The family's only recorded member was Mimosa Bunce, whose name found its way into Shire records when she married Ponto Baggins, a son of the Baggins patriarch Balbo. Mimosa therefore lived some two generations before the time of Bilbo Baggins, and she would in fact have been Bilbo's great aunt (her husband Ponto was the younger brother of Mungo Baggins, who was one of Bilbo's grandfathers). It is likely that she knew Bilbo as child (we have no specific dates for Mimosa, but at the time Bilbo was born, she would probably have been in her seventies).
Apart from Mimosa, no other Hobbit named 'Bunce' is ever recorded. We can probably take this to imply that the family was not a particularly important one among the Shire-hobbits. This idea is supported by the lack of any named Bunces at Bilbo's Farewell Party, suggesting that the Bunce family had faded in importance, or perhaps ceased to exist altogether, by the end of the Third Age.
Notes
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We only have a record of a single member of the Bunce family, Mimosa Bunce, and even for Mimosa we're lacking any specific dates. The dates of birth and death shown here are those for Mimosa's husband Ponto Baggins, which at least indicate the period during which Mimosa lived. The family presumably predated Mimosa herself, and likely other Bunces were to be found in the Shire, but we have no detailed history for any other members of this family.
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'Bunce' is a real English surname, but there is some uncertainty about its origins (and, indeed, different families might have acquired the name with different meanings from independent sources). One suggested origin is a northern English dialect word for 'tall' or 'thin', but that hardly seems suitable for a family of Shire-hobbits. Other alternatives might be French bon, interpreted as 'good' or 'jolly', or Germanic Bunz, 'little barrel' (used as a nickname for a short, rotund person). Either 'jolly' or 'barrel-like' might be appropriate origins for a Hobbit-name, but its Germanic origins tend in favour of Bunz as the intended origin (if indeed the name had such an origin outside Tolkien's imagination).
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- Updated 1 June 2023
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