Luckily, they have kept the first name in the translations, but the name, Bilbo Baggins, is transformed to Bilbo Lommelun in Norwegian. See, I am from Norway. Now, Lommelun means something like: Soft and nice, refferring to your pocket. Thats pretty whack But a cool thing is that the name for Tolkiens "world" is calle Middle Earth right? But it is also refferred to as Midgaard who is an old scandinavian viking-word. In Norwegian it means:

-Midtgård - Gården i midten, den viktigste

And in english it means : The center place , the most important farmhouse.

Aint that cool? If you are from a different part of the world, or knows the translations in other languages, tell us !

Tolkien, besides being a writer, was a Philologist, a studier of words and Languages. When you say something Soft and Nice, referring to the Pocket, could this be the Ring Perhaps?

I dont think the ring is involved. You see, its a bit different to explain.

The first part of the word is easy; Lomme - Pocket
But the other part; lun - is hard to translate, though I know what it means.

But to tell it another way: Lommelun can also mean; Happy to live in your part (pocket) of whatever place your living in, or being as calm and soft and nice as a....pocket!

I dont know if I made it clearer or really messed this up

In Holland it's a bit different;

Bilbo Baggins became: Bilbo Balings

I think the reason they did that is the GG part.. we pronounce a G (djee) like a ch, you make the sound with your throat, it would be too hard to pronounce it properly for most people I suppose. You would get something like 'bachings" which is ofcourse totally different from what it's supposed to be..

Middle earth became Midden-Aarde, which is translated as central earth.. So that's almost the same..

Great! Thanks for contributing, Huan! See, we got Norway, Holland, The US and England of course!

Who else is out there?

One more thing , how about the shire?

It's called 'de Gouw' in holland.. My personal interpreation is as follows:

Gouw looks like Douw, and Douw is translated as Dew, which reminds me of the shire, early morning, dew on the flowers in a little hobbit garden, sun rising, birds singing, sound of water which comes from a small stream.. hehe

Anyone else?

In Slovenian it's Bilbo Bisagin, Bisaga is an old name for a bag for food, so it's Bilbo Foodbags

That's awesome, liriel! And quite appropriate .

Bibo Foodbags . That is awesome. Tolkien always said Hobbits were the true ancestors of Brits...I think that clinches it .

GB

You see, in Russian we have several different translations of LOTR and The Hobbit. In the most popular one Bilbo Baggins is presented as Bilbo Soomnicks ("oo" is pronounced as in the english "root" for example). "Soomka" just means "the bag" in Russian. Thus such a translation is very close to the original meaning of this familyname. There is another variant as "Torbins" - as "torba" means a huge, oldstyle bag which was used by the piligrims (it was often tied to the saddle on horseback). The second variant is even closer to the plot of "The Hobbit" and LOTR with it's ponies carrying huge bags with food, tobacko and even fryingpans, on their backs.
In some other translations (including the official - cinema translation of Peter Jackson's film) the name is not translated at all and is pronounced as it is in the original English variant - Bilbo Baggins.