THEORIES OF RELATEEVEETY: BOFFIN ABOUT

In "The Lord Of The Rings", J.R.R. Tolkien delineated how the other sentient races "diminished" and so gave way to the rise of Man. The Elves abandoned Middle-Earth and sailed into the West back to Valinor; the dwarves retreated into the depths of the earth and inside the mountains; and having never found the Entwives, the Ents finally slumbered and reverted to trees.

As for the hobbits, here is a key point mentioned in Wikipedia:

According to the author in the prologue to The Lord of the Rings, Hobbits are "relatives" of the race of Men. Elsewhere Tolkien describes Hobbits as a "variety" or separate "branch" of humans. Within the story, Hobbits and other races seem aware of the similarities (hence the colloquial terms "Big People" and "Little People" used in Bree). However, within the story, Hobbits considered themselves a separate people. At the time of the events in The Lord of the Rings, Hobbits lived in the Shire and in Bree in the north west of Middle-earth, though by the end, some had moved out to the Tower Hills and to Gondor and Rohan.

It is the size difference that distinguishes man from hobbit, and I think over generations that distinction disappeared.

While in the company of Treebeard, Meriadoc Brandybuck and Pippin Took availed themselves of the "Entwash". Drinking that Nature-infused water made both of them grow in stature. Eventually they both married (Merry to Estella Bolger and Pippin to Diamond of Long Cleve) and their descendants inherited this new growth potential.

Eventually, after more generations, the change to their DNA would affect all future hobbits until they truly were indistinguishable from the "big folk". And then cross-breeding between man and hobbit would have occurred until the hobbit race was fully absorbed into that of Mankind.

But their heritage would endure, and that would be reflected at least in their family names.

From Wikipedia:

BOFFIN

A family with many connections to the Bagginses and Tooks. Apparently found in the Yale, Overhill, and other areas surrounding Hobbiton. The name is an Anglicization of the old hobbit term 'Bophîn', of unknown meaning.

And so we see that the family name of "Boffin" survived into the Victorian era with Nicodemus and Henrietty Boffin, whose lives were chronicled by Charles Dickens in "Our Mutual Friend".

That's all well and good for BookWorld, but can we apply the same theory of relateeveety to Toobworld?

So far, "The Lord Of The Rings" exists only in two dimensions of the TV Universe - the Tooniverse and Skitlandia. "Our Mutual Friend" was adapted three times for television, with the 1958-59 series taking preeminence in Earth Prime-Time.

If we have to relegate the other adaptations to alternate TV dimensions, then I would like to suggest that the 1978 televersion should be placed in the Borderlands, where TV and movies intersect. There, the characters of Peter Jackson's film epic can co-exist with the recastaways from Dickens' last fully completed novel's adaptation. As such, we could claim that Nicodemus Boffin's ancestors were hobbits.

Sound far-fetched?

Take a look at this comparison between Mr. Boffin and Everard Proudfoot......

Looks a bit hobbitish to me!

BCnU!