Isn’t Gollum a hobbit himself? Even when Bilbo says, “I’m a hobbit from the Shire,” Gollum doesn’t recognize the word. Why doesn’t he know one of his own?
Hobbits I think is a term coined by elves in the north to describe the halflings (as full-sized men called them.) Smeagol’s folk were to the east and south, along the Anduin.
Frodo thinks he was one of the River-folk, not unlike the Hobbits. I don’t recall the backstory that well, but I think they were remnants of the migration of the Hobbits to the Shire. So they likely did not call themselves “Hobbits” at that time/place.
Or, as the diego says, it was a word coined by others. American examples would be Sioux or Cherokee, both of which were words used by others to describe people who didn’t call themselves by those names.
Because he isn’t a hobbit? Who said he was?
Minor reservation…just keep in mind that Tolkien changed Gollum’s role and the ring significantly between the first draft of The Hobbit, later printings, and The Lord of The Rings.
Gollum has pretty sketchy memories of his own past and it appears that he goes through phases of remembering and not-remembering. You see that even in the naming - Gollum being the ring-warped version of Smeagol.
Also, Gollum hasn’t seen anything but orcs and fish for a very long time, and he’s a long way away from anywhere hobbits call home. Even if he thought “That looks like a hobbit” he might also think “But it can’t be a hobbit, not here. Must be something else.”
The cannon explanation is that Gollum was corrupted by the ring for hundreds of years, goblins and occasional elves were the most likely things he saw (and sometimes ate) in the cave, Bilbo was the first hobbit he saw in centuries and he was by them just another critter to eat. Then Gandalf later told Frodo about what Bilbo had told him. Making the incident in the cave the result of an unreliable narrator.
The more prosaic explanation is that just how exactly Bilbo got the ring and the background of Smeagol/Gollum was retroactively made to fit in the new continuity by Tolkien when he wrote The Lord of the Rings.
Originally Gollum was just a Hobbit like creature, or like Tolkien said, “I don’t know where he came from, nor who or what he was.” Subsequent editions of the Hobbit made even more changes that the ones seen here:
I seem to remember Smeagol being described as a “hobbit-like creature” or from a people “like hobbits” or something along those lines.
Gollum is a Stoor, part of a Hobbit ancestral group. It’s possible that he just hadn’t heard the word before.
Smeagol’s folk were akin to the fathers of the fathers of the Stoors of the Shire, per JRRT. Encyclopedia of Arda expounds on this further here
Smeagol was approximately 450 years old when Bilbo was born. Lots of time for little variations in language, habit, etc. to creep in.
He* had developed a few bad hobbits by then.
*JRRT
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I don’t think so. “Gollum” came from the noise he made in his throat. (Perhaps it was a name given to him in the caves by the goblins who heard him.) I don’t think he ever refers to himself as Gollum. When he talks to himself in LOTR I think he still refers to himself as Sméagol.
Yes, Tolkien explained this in the appendices. The Hobbits had three branches, the Stools, the Clubfoots, and the Naugahydes.
Gandalf speaks of Gollum’s people (and they were the ones who called him Gollum once he started to make that noise) as being akin to the fathers of the fathers of the Stoors. They were related to the Periannath who migrated to the Shire a few hundred years earlier (The Tale of Years – which calls Deagol a Stoor) but presumably that colony must have gone extinct later.
It’s worth noting that Gollum is older than Rohan.
The High King at Ribroast, Arglebargle IV (or somebody else) granted them land in the Stye.
Given that the answer to the multiple-choice question “Gollum from The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings was originally: A) An Elf, B) An Orc, C) A Hobbit, D) A Dwarf” last night at Quizzo was “A Hobbit”, that has to be the correct answer, as the Quizzo-master never lies…
eh, never mind…
They did not like machines more complicated than a garrotte or a Luger.
“Pity stayed his hand ‘it’s a pity I’ve run ot of bullets’.”
Grundig Blaupunkt Luger Frug
Watusi Snarf Wazoo
Nixon Dirksen Nasahist
Rebozo Boogaloo!
(The inscription on the Magic Dingus)
That’s one of those ones that more people are aware of than are even aware of the source material.