Halflings
Most simply, “Halfling” is the term used to refer to any individual in Realmgard with parents of different ethnic origins.
“Halfling” therefore does not refer to one discrete group of people. Rather, it is a general term for a rather broad class of people in Realmgard. Especially taking the breadth of the definition into account, there is a sizeable population of Halflings in Realmgard, though Halflings tend to identify with their local communities more than as part of a cross-Realmgard community of Halflings, given the diversity of Realmgard’s Halflings.
“Halfling” is not generally understood as a derogatory term, though it is sometimes viewed as woefully insufficient given that it refers to basically any person of mixed ethnicity.
Generally, “Halfling” is the lawyer-friendly way of saying “Hobbit” in the Fantasy genre. In fact, first edition Dungeons & Dragons actually did call them Hobbits, until they got sued…
–Ling means basically “person”, so Hobbits are presumably Halflings because they’re half as tall as Men. Halfling is also a Tolkien word, but one that was never trademarked —incidentally, so is mithril; but current DnD does also avoid using the term (see, or example, first editions of the Icewind Dale books vs. later reprints).
But the etymology holds up just well as it’s parsed as “person who is half something” — like, say Half Elf or Half Goblin. So, basically, Halfling is the Realmgard equivalent of what we’d call biracial.
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