J.R.R. Tolkien’s bear-like people in The Hobbit are called the Beornings.
The Beornings are connected with Beorn, a large and powerful man who can transform into a bear. In The Hobbit, Beorn helps Bilbo and the dwarves after they escape from Mirkwood. His home provides food, shelter, and horses before the travelers continue toward the Lonely Mountain.
The group’s name identifies Beorn’s descendants and followers. They live in the region between the Misty Mountains and Mirkwood and maintain roads and settlements there. Their presence is important after the Battle of the Five Armies, when the political and economic landscape around the northern Anduin changes.
Readers sometimes mistake the Beornings for a separate fantasy race in the same sense as Elves or Dwarves. Tolkien presents them more as a people descended from or associated with Beorn, whose unusual shape-changing ability is exceptional. The name also resembles the Old English word “beorn,” meaning a man or warrior, a linguistic connection consistent with Tolkien’s method of building names from older languages.