Middle-earth is the fictional continent containing most of J.R.R. Tolkien’s major stories. The name refers to the inhabited lands where the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings chiefly occur.
Middle-earth is not the entire world in Tolkien’s mythology. It is a region of Arda, the world created in Tolkien’s larger legendarium. To the west lies Aman, the continent associated with Valinor, while other regions and seas extend beyond the settings most familiar to readers.
The term comes from older Germanic and English expressions related to the human world. Tolkien used it as a modern form of a traditional concept rather than as a name meaning simply “a planet.”
Important Middle-earth locations include Beleriand in the First Age, Eriador and Rhovanion in later ages, and Mordor in the Second and Third Ages. The geography changes across Tolkien’s imagined history, including after major world-shaping events.