Samwise, Frodo Baggins’s companion in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, has the surname Gamgee.
Samwise Gamgee is a hobbit from Hobbiton and works as Frodo’s gardener. He accompanies Frodo from the Shire after being chosen to help with the journey to destroy the One Ring. His loyalty becomes one of the central emotional forces of the story.
Sam is sometimes described simply as Frodo’s servant, but Tolkien gives him a much larger role. He carries the burden when Frodo can no longer continue, resists the Ring’s temptation for a time, and helps preserve hope during the journey through Mordor. He later becomes mayor of the Shire.
The name Gamgee has a real-world connection: “gamgee” was a colloquial name for surgical cotton in nineteenth-century Britain, derived from surgeon Joseph Sampson Gamgee. Tolkien encountered the word in Birmingham, though the fictional surname belongs to Sam’s character and family.