The Tolkien family is an English family of German descent whose best-known member is J. R. R. Tolkien, Oxford academic and author of the fantasy books The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion.
According to Ryszard Derdziński the Tolkien name is of Low Prussian origin and probably means "son/descendant of Tolk", with Tolk meaning interpreter or negotiator and originating as a nickname. A number of other theories on the meaning of the name have been proposed, including that it is derived from the village of Tolkynen in East Prussia. J. R. R. Tolkien suggested the name was derived from the German adjective tollkühn, meaning foolhardy. Several people with the surname Tolkien or similar spelling, some of them members of the same family as J. R. R. Tolkien, live in northern Germany, but most of them are descendants of recent refugees from East Prussia who fled the Red Army invasion (1945). J. R. R. Tolkien's own knowledge of the family history was limited to its 18th-century German origin, according to Derdziński in part because he was "early isolated from the family of his prematurely deceased father."
The Tolkien family originated in the East Prussian town Kreuzburg near Königsberg, where the Tolkien name is attested since the 16th century. The verified paternal line of J. R. R. Tolkien starts with Michel Tolkien, born around 1620 in Kreuzburg. Michel's son Christianus Tolkien (1663–1746) was a wealthy miller in Kreuzburg. His son Christian Tolkien (1706–1791) moved from Kreuzburg to nearby Danzig, and his two sons Daniel Gottlieb Tolkien (1747–1813) and Johann (later known as John) Benjamin Tolkien (1752–1819) emigrated to London in the 1770s, and became the ancestors of the English family. The family first appears in English records in 1777. In 1792 John Benjamin Tolkien and William Gravell took over the Erdley Norton manufacture in London, which from then on sold clocks and watches under the name Gravell & Tolkien. Daniel Gottlieb obtained British citizenship in 1794, but John Benjamin apparently never became a British citizen. Their German nephew Daniel Gottlieb Bergmann also joined them in London. Johann (John) Benjamin Tolkien, who died in London in 1819, was the 2nd great-grandfather of J. R. R. Tolkien.

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