John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born on 3 January 1892, the elder
son of Arthur Tolkien, a bank manager from Birmingham, and Mabel
Tolkien (née Suffield), the daughter of a commercial traveller.
The Tolkiens (the name, by Tolkien's own account, an anglicised
derivative of German tollkühn, “foolhardy”;) had emigrated to
England from Saxony in the eighteenth century. But by 1892 the
Tolkiens were, as Tolkien himself remarked, “intensely English”;
and he came, in any case, to identify especially strongly with
his mother's family, the Suffields.  Tolkien was born in
Bloemfontein, South Africa, where his father had taken up an
appointment with the Bank of Africa. In his fourth year,
however, his mother brought her two …   Rosebury, Brian. "J. R.
R. Tolkien". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 08
January 2001 [, accessed 12 December 2013.]  Articles on
Tolkien's works    1. Lord of the Rings   2. The History of
Middle-earth   3. The Hobbit   4. The Silmarillion   5.
Unfinished Tales  Related Groups    1. Cath