Tolkienists.org

For me, one of the many pleasures of The Lord of the Rings is its landscape — not just that map which caused Tolkien so many hours of worry, but all of the places on it with all of their names, each clearly made with care and attention to linguistic detail, beginning with the creation of the Shire and all it contains, but moving beyond it to encompass the whole of Middle-earth. As he explained in a letter to Rayner Unwin:

Yet actually in an imaginary country and period, as this one, coherently made, the nomenclature is a more important element than in an ​‘historical’ novel.

— Letter to Rayner Unwin, 3 July, 1956, Letters, 250

And yet, for all of that care, Tolkien the story-teller never draws attention to that naming. As in any country, especially a very old one, as the Shire and, in turn, Middle-earth, are meant to be, the names are just that and, like the land itself, they have become worn-down natural features. As JRRT himself writes in that same letter to Rayner Unwin:

Actually the Shire Map plays a very small part in the narrative, and most of its purpose is a descriptive build-up.

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