Brandybuck family

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The Brandybuck family began as the Oldbuck clan, who named themselves such apparently after a Bucca of the Marish, who became the first Thain of the Shire. Ten Oldbuck Thains followed, until Gorhendad Oldbuck, the twelfth Thain, migrated into Buckland over the river Brandywine. This familly is of Fallohide and Stoor origins

Gorhendad renamed himself Brandybuck, and began delving the great smials of Brandy Hall. Around the hill was built the village of Bucklebury. Starting with Gorhendad, the head of the Brandybuck family was called the Master of Buckland, or the Master of the Hall, and was in this function the master of Buckland, a virtually independent part of the Shire. The farmers between Stock and Rushey in the Marish also acknowledged the authority of the Master of Buckland.

It was traditional for each of the Masters to have an epigraph attached to their names, such as Gorbadoc "Broadbelt", Saradoc "Scattergold", and the most famous, Meriadoc Brandybuck "the Magnificent".

The Bucklanders were seen as strange and half-foreigners by most of the other Hobbits of the old Shire. However the Bucklanders were not very different from other Hobbits, except that they liked boats, that some of them could swim and that they locked their doors at night (because of the exposure to the Old Forest).