Éomer his sister Éowyn were adopted by their uncle Théoden, king of the Rohirrim. He first appears in "The Two Towers" as the leader of the "éored" who attacked and killed the Uruk-hai who had kidnapped the hobbits Meriadoc Brandybuck and Peregrin Took. He helps Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas by providing them two horses, Hasufel and Arod, and guiding them to the spot where the attack had taken place. On his return to Edoras, Éomer reports this meeting to Théoden, and is promptly imprisoned on the orders of Gríma Wormtongue, Théoden's sinister advisor. Gríma kept the king in a sickly stupor
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