Brandybuck Clan Brandybuck Clan In J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional universe of Middle-earth, the Brandybuck clan was a powerful Hobbit family. Like the other main aristocratic families, the Tooks and the Bolgers, they had a Fallohide strain, though they and the Bucklanders among whom they lived were at least partly of Stoor origin, and "by all accounts" had Bree blood as well. The family began as the Oldbuck clan, who named themselves such apparently after "Bucca of the Marish", the first Thain of the Shire. Eleven Oldbuck Thains followed, until "Gorhendad Oldbuck" crossed the Brandywine river into what would become Buckland. The
Meriadoc Brandybuck "faithful" and "friend". Tolkien used Old English to represent Rohirric, another of his fictional languages, so "Holdwine", like "Meriadoc Brandybuck", is not what the character was actually called. Tolkien does not give Merry's real Rohirric name. It has been asserted that the name "Meriadoc" could be in itself an allusion to the British nobleman Conan Meriadoc, legendary founder of the House of Rohan in Brittany, since the character Meriadoc is closely associated with Tolkien's kingdom of Rohan. But Tolkien, in response to a reader's inquiry, denied that the Breton name inspired the name of his fictional kingdom. Meriadoc Brandybuck Meriadoc