Hamfast Gamgee, the father of Samwise, had a name that derived from Old English hámfæst, 'stay-at-home' (or literally 'home-fast'). Actually, this is not in fact quite true, because Hamfast lived in a time long before Old English existed. Rather, a name with an ancient English origin, Hamfast, was constructed to represent his original name in the Common Speech of the Shire, which was Ranugad.
Ranugad was an old name whose origins had been long forgotten by the Shire-hobbits, but it nonetheless had the same underlying meaning as its more familiar translated form Hamfast. The name was sometimes abbreviated to Ran (or Ham as a translated equivalent). By a similar process, Hamfast's family name Gamgee represented the original Shire name Galpsi, so Hamfast Gamgee's original full name would have been Ranugad Galpsi.
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We are given the name Ranugad specifically as the original form of Hamfast Gamgee's name, but Hamfast Gamgee was not the only 'Hamfast' in his family. There were at least two other Hobbits of this name in the same line of descent: Hamfast Gamgee's great-great-grandfather Hamfast of Gamwich, and his grandson Hamfast, the son of Sam Gamgee. It seems reasonable to presume that Ranugad would also have been the original name of these other 'Hamfasts'.
There were also members of Hamfast's family with names using one or other of the elements that made up 'Hamfast' (such as Hamson or Halfast) and these names presumably, in their original form, incorporated the ran- or -gad seen in Ranugad.
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- Updated 23 April 2026
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