Middle-earth is the fictional land where most of J.R.R. Tolkien’s stories in The Lord of the Rings take place.
The name refers to a large region of Arda, Tolkien’s wider imagined world. The Lord of the Rings follows events in places such as the Shire, Rivendell, Rohan, Gondor, Mordor, and the Misty Mountains, all of which are located in Middle-earth.
Middle-earth is sometimes mistaken for the entire universe of Tolkien’s mythology. In Tolkien’s terminology, Arda is the world, while Aman is a separate continent to the west and Valinor is a realm within Aman. Númenor was an island kingdom that existed during an earlier period of the world’s history.
Tolkien adapted the name from the older Germanic concept of a middle world, but his Middle-earth is not simply another name for Earth in ordinary modern usage. It is a specifically developed setting with its own languages, peoples, geography, and ages.