Board Thread:News and Announcements/@comment-6493589-20150619172544/@comment-24891101-20150621010619

But they didn't. It's assumed to happen for all fiction where Earth and the linguistic history of English (or whatever language the story is written in) don't exist and the writers have not developed languages of origin for every name. It's implicit in the writing process for all authors.

In the particular case of Frodo, it only matters in its specifics if one is familiar with Old English, but more generally, it sounds comfortable and vaguely familiar. Another example: Bilbo is Bilba in Westron, but since to an English speaker -a endings are feminine by familiarity with the romance languages, Tolkien altered it to sound better to us. Take Gamgee, son and father, orginally Banazîr and Ranagud, which mean halfwise and stay-at-home. Therefore Tolkien uses Samwise, from samwís and hámfœst, semi-wise and home-fast (in the same way as steadfast). These new names sound very much Anglo-Saxon, which is exactly the impression he wants to convey. Consider also that he was English, who have a bit more familiarity with Anglo-Saxon placenames and such. It's intended to be comfortingly familiar.