The Encyclopedia of Arda - an interactive guide to the world of J.R.R. Tolkien
Dates
Extant in the closing years of the Third Age1
Race
Culture
Settlements
Worked the Old Mill at Hobbiton
Meaning
Apparently derived from the family tradition of milling2

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  • Updated 7 July 2022
  • This entry is complete

Sandyman Family

The millers of Hobbiton

Sandyman
the miller
Ted
Sandyman

A family that operated the Old Mill on the Water at Hobbiton for at least two generations. The origins of the name are uncertain, but the family's association with milling suggests a connection with the 'sanding' of flourdust they would have received in their work. Neither of the recorded Sandymans were well-liked in Hobbiton, but the younger, Ted Sandyman, went so far as to fall in with Lotho Sackville-Baggins during the War of the Ring. He sold the mill to Lotho (known at that time simply as 'The Boss'), who knocked it down and replaced it with an ugly brick building.


Notes

1

Our first reference to a member of the Sandyman family is in III 3001, when the elder Sandyman joined the gossip in The Ivy Bush, but he was evidently already fairly old at that point. The apparent reference in the name Sandyman to the trade of milling (see note 2 below) can be taken to imply that old Sandyman was not the first of the millers, and that the family had worked the Old Mill for several generations before this. The miller's son Ted Sandyman apparently survived the War of the Ring, but his fate is not recorded; whether the family continued after his time is not known.

2

The name Sandyman is not explained, but it seems to be a punning reference to the miller being 'sanded' with flour dust from the mill. In real family names containing 'sand', the reference is more usually to literal sand (this literal connection appears in the Bree-land family name of Sandheaver), and so a direct derivation from the Sandymans' trade of milling is not absolutely certain.

Indexes:

About this entry:

  • Updated 7 July 2022
  • This entry is complete

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