The fictional land in J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings is called Middle-earth. It is the central inhabited region of Tolkien’s wider fictional world and the setting for much of his legendarium.
Middle-earth contains locations such as the Shire, Rivendell, Moria, Gondor, Mordor, and Rohan. The Lord of the Rings follows the struggle to destroy the One Ring, while The Hobbit also takes place largely in Middle-earth. Tolkien’s maps and invented histories give the region the depth of an imagined ancient world.
The name is not simply Tolkien’s synonym for an entire planet. It derives from older Germanic and Old English concepts, including Midgard and middangeard, referring to the inhabited world. In modern usage, however, “Middle-earth” is often used loosely to mean Tolkien’s whole fantasy setting, including regions beyond the central continent.