The Yale

The Yale is the name of the low-lying lands of the Shire's Eastfarthing that lay along the northern side of the long road from Stock westwards to Tuckborough. This seems to have been a sparsely populated area, and in fact the map of the Shire in The Lord of the Rings marks only a single building here. The meaning of the Yale's name is obscure. The well-known English personal and placename "Yale" has its origins in a Welsh expression meaning "fertile upland." Its use may suggest that the Hobbits who named it had contacts with "strange" languages, possibly those of Dunland.