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Selling Bag End was an ugly business, and in the end Bilbo just didn’t. Instead, he fixed Lotho Baggins with a warning stare, and proposed that two of their widowed aunts who were known to get on well together should move in instead.
Daring him. Just daring the other Hobbit to speak out against this plan. The chinks were all there, two such elderly ladies might need help with things, it would be good for them to have a little one like his Dudo running about, et cetera, et cetera. The invitation to a decisive Baggins-vs-Baggins battle was clear, and Bilbo could see Lobelia’s face reddening with indignation in the background at her husband’s continued silence.
Then Sunny Bracegirdle spoke up unexpectedly. She wasn’t the brightest Hobbit, but she and her husband had a rather modest smial, and quite a remarkable number of children.
“Might my mam come too?” she asked, “-if it’s all right?”
“Well it would really be up to our aunts at this point, but-” Bilbo began, flustered. There was a moment of golden silence, and then the meeting exploded.
Sunflower Bracegirdle, it seemed, was not the only Hobbit in the area whose elderly (and often difficult to get on with) parents were wishing for a moment’s peace from their numerous posterity. A small place of their own. A room. A fortnight’s holiday, even....
The decision was out of his hands now Bilbo saw, if he ever wanted to show his face in Hobbiton again, and he wisely delegated the organization and running of this entire mad business to his eminently qualified and intensely stickeybeak aunts.
On the bright side he’d just bought himself an Olifant-load of social coin, Bag End remained technically his, and Lobelia Sackville-Baggins wouldn’t even be considered for residence in Bag End until she was old and gray herself.
The actual name 'Bag End' was a trifle unfortunate. Everyone agreed upon it. ...And yet it stayed, because if there had ever BEEN a time when it would have been possible to change the name of the famous smial, that ship had sailed.