For Maura: Since you asked about Bingo Bear's characteristics

[lavendertook]

Since I've been asked about Bingo's source's characteristics, I'm taking this as an excuse to transcribe one of my favorite footnotes ever. In The Return of the Shadow which is Vol. 6 of The History of Middle-Earth and a recounting of the early drafts of FOTR, Christopher Tolkien quotes his father's biographer Humphrey Carpenter's statement that the name "Bingo" comes from "the name of a family of toy koala bears owned by his children, 'The Bingos'" (qtd in RotS 28).

CT then footnotes this to state:

I find it difficult to believe this, yet if it is not so the coincidence is strange. If Bingo Baggins did get his name from this source, I can only suppose that the demonic character (composed of monomaniac religious despotism and a lust for destruction through high explosive) of the chief Bingo (not to mention that of his appalling wife), by which my sister and I now remember them, developed somewhat later. (34)

Go Chris and Prisca! (-:

And why does the headline in my town newspaper, "Council Okays More Bingo, Defers on Beer and Wine" make me so very happy? Heeeeehe. The little things that make life delightful.

Comments

[lavendertook.livejournal.com]

Right behind Frotima's puppet is quite an honor! Thanks for telling me--it really means a lot to me, and I will tell Bingo--he could use the cheering right now. (-:

Well, he's an acton figure and puppet fraternizer--he doesn't have to cooperate. Yes, I saw the uproar.(-: Those Frodo's have a way of going missing!