# Did Tolkien's Eldar have pointy ears?



## maarten (Feb 12, 2002)

*pointy ears*

Its kind off well known that 'Elves' have pointy ears but did Tolkiens Eldar have??


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## bunnywhippit (Feb 12, 2002)

I'm sure there was a thread about this recently, where they were talking about Tolkien mentioning that the Elves had ears shaped like leaves, then of course that led someone to quip "as long as you don't think of them as maple leaves".   

I'm not sure where the thread got to though...


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## Gary Gamgee (Feb 12, 2002)

I would have thought so yes in the Sil it says...

"In the beginning the Eldar children of Illuvatar were stronger and greater than they have since become; but not more fair, for though the beauty of the Quendi in the days of their youth was beyond other beauty that Illuvatar has caused to be, it has not perished"

This sounds then that their physical apperance, at least, has never changed.


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## Elu Thingol (May 31, 2002)

*Pointy Ear Syndrome*

As long as I can remember I have had pointy ears. I used to hate them until I read LOTR. Now I love them because they make me look like an elf. Does any body else have the pointy ear syndrome?


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## Courtney (Jun 1, 2002)

No, unfortunately i have very small ears. Although, when I was little, I tried to stretch them to make them look like elf ears...


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## Beorn (Jun 1, 2002)

For Kem,

Elves have leaf-shaped ears!


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## Theoden (Jun 1, 2002)

mine are leaf-shaped! I must be an elf! YEY!!!!

(I guess now would be the time to remember that there are thousands of leaf shapes out there... so we're all elves!!!)


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## Lantarion (Jun 1, 2002)

I have slightly pointy ears. That's it, I'm changing my name to Mithdil and sailing to Valinor!  LOL


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## Xanaphia (Jun 1, 2002)

Personnaly, I don't have pointy or leaf shaped ears, but my friend has really strange shaped ears that could be called pointy or leafed shaped. However she is not really a LOTR fan so she, if anything, is ashamedof her extroidinary ears.


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## HLGStrider (Jun 2, 2002)

Better pointy ears than a pointy head, eh???

Anyway, I don't have them but would sort of like them.


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## HLGStrider (Aug 26, 2004)

Is it worth pointing out that the Elf in the Father Christmas Letters _does_ have pointy ears? Of course, he's also short and wears a pointy hat. . .


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## Barliman Butterbur (Aug 26, 2004)

*Re: pointy ears*



maarten said:


> Its kind off well known that 'Elves' have pointy ears but did Tolkiens Eldar have??



Although it's never mentioned in the books, Tolkien mentions in his letters that Elves have pointed ears somewhat like leaves, and that Hobbits have the same but not so pointed. My assumption is he imagined all the races of Middle-earth (with the exception of Men and perhaps Dwarves) had them to some degree.

Barley

"In the mountains of truth you never climb in vain." —Friedrich Nietzsche 47b


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## Inderjit S (Aug 26, 2004)

I think he was talking about Elves as in Father Christmas's helper Elves-not the Elves of his legendarium, since his legendarium was not well known at the time, and thus the person who he was writing too would not know what Tolkien's Elf was, and thus the example would have meant nothing to him-wheras he would have known what Father Christmas's Elf looked like.



> LAS^1- [for:] [?human] [read:] Human "The Quendian ears were more pointed and leaf-shaped than Human


 _HoME 5_


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## HLGStrider (Aug 27, 2004)

IT PROVES IT! MY THEORY IS CORRECT! I'VE ALWAYS KNOWN IT TO BE TRUE!

Elves are VULCANS!


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## Ronaldinho (Aug 31, 2004)

It does not state specifically in any of Tolkien's works whether Elves have pointy ears.


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## Inderjit S (Aug 31, 2004)

Apart from the quote which I have provided.


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## Elthir (Dec 26, 2007)

True, _Etymologies_ has been quoted often on this issue, but its date can be problematic (compare also the date of the letter concerning Hobbits). For some context concerning _Etymologies_ see below. As of today however we have something to compare to the older LAS- entries, something written after _The Lord of the Rings_ was published. First, the older entry in fuller form:

'LAS1-_*lassë_ leaf: Q _lasse_, N _lhass_; Q _lasselanta_ leaf-fall, autumn, N _lhasbelin_ (*_lassekweëne_), cf. Q_ Narquelion_ [KWEL]. _Lhasgalen _Greenleaf (Gnome name of Laurelin). (Some think this is related to the next and *_lassê _ear. The Quendian ears were more pointed and leaf-shaped than Human).' _The Lost Road_

Compare to





> 'Q lasse 'leaf (S las); pl. lassi (S lais). It is only applied to certain kinds of leaves, especially those of trees, and would not e.g. be used of leaf of a hyacinth (linque). It is thus possibly related to LAS 'listen', and S-LAS stem of Elvish words for 'ear'; Q hlas, dual hlaru. Sindarin dual lhaw, singular lhewig.'


 
JRRT _Words, Phrases and Passages_, Parma Eldalamberon 17


_Etymologies_, according to Christopher Tolkien, dates generally to the late 1930's. Christopher notes (edited a bit here by me): _'... some of the additions and corrections can be securely dated to the end of 1937 and the beginning of 1938, the time of the abandonment of QS and the beginning of The Lord of the Rings (...) there are relatively few names that belong specifically to The Lord of the Rings; that all of them are quite clearly additions to existing entries or introduce additional base-stems; that almost all were put in very hastily, mere memoranda, and not really accommodated to or explained in relation to the base-stems, and that the great majority come from the earlier part of The Lord of the Rings -- before the breaking of the fellowship. (...) Clear cases of names from later in The Lord of the Rings do occur (...) but are very few._

_'I conclude therefore that while my father did for two or three years make rather desultory entries in the Etymologies as new names emerged in The Lord of the Rings, he gave up even this as the new work proceeded (...) The Etymologies, then, reflect the linguistic situation in Beleriand envisaged in the Lhammas (see especially the third version, Lammasethen. p. 194), with Noldorin fully preserved as the language of the Exiles, though profoundly changed from its Valinorean form and having complex interrelations in respect of names of 'Beleriandic' (Ilkorin), especially the speech of Doriath'_

It would be some time before _The Lord of the Rings_ was completed of course (and the first volume ultimately published in 1954). Christopher Tolkien hints at changes to come ...

_'Afterwards my father developed the conception of a kind of amalgamation between Noldorin and the indigenous speech of Beleriand, though ultimately there emerged the situation described in the Silmarillion (p. 129): the Noldor abandoned their own tongue and adopted that of the Elves of Beleriand (Sindarin). So far-reaching was this reformation that the pre-existent linguistic structures themselves were moved into new historical relations and given new names; but there is no need here to enter that rather baffling territory.'_ 

Christopher Tolkien _The Lost __Road_


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## Prince of Cats (Apr 3, 2008)

Brillliant!

Thanks for the info


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## Barliman Butterbur (Apr 4, 2008)

*Re: pointy ears*



maarten said:


> Its kind of well known that 'Elves' have pointy ears but did Tolkiens Eldar have??



I'm not sure anyone knows. Even Tolkien never mentioned this point in the books proper, only in a side comment elsewhere.

Barley


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## Elthir (Apr 4, 2008)

*Re: pointy ears*



Barliman Butterbur said:


> I'm not sure anyone knows. Even Tolkien never mentioned this point in the books proper, only in a side comment elsewhere.


 
And even then it was back in the late 1930s or thereabouts. Texts from this time period will not necessarily give one JRRT's updated notions of course (though in some cases the late 1930s is the latest version one can work with). 

The reason I posted the much later text concerning LAS is because the comment on Quendian ears is 'lacking' by comparison. Though admittedly its _lack_ is rather thin ice, still, it's as if Tolkien was writing the entry anew and makes no mention of Quendian ears after noting the possible linguistic relationship (which he does note in both the old and later text) -- meaning if he thought the idea was still true, here was essentially the same place to say so clearly, and he didn't. 

We know that Tolkien was unhappy with the translation_ Elves_ for his Quendi because of Primary World associations, as he was with _Gnomes_ for the Noldor. He ultimately dropped Gnomes, but kept Elves obviously. On the other hand JRRT could have guessed certain illustrators, if not the film treatments suggested in his time, were going to depict his Elves, and one might wonder why he appears to have given no instruction either way (if indeed he never did), which might speak to his leaving it open to interpretation perhaps.

In any case Tolkien never published any indication of pointed Elvish ears, and (as far as we know today) never described them as leaf-shaped or pointed in any 'unpublished' text dating to after the time _The Lord of the Rings_ was completed and put in bookstores; and he wrote plenty of 'unpublished' texts, adding up the 50s, 60s and early seventies, these now made known through Christopher Tolkien of course. 

That said, Tolkien's Words, Phrases and Passages was just published recently, so who knows what else is out there awaiting print.


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## Barliman Butterbur (Apr 5, 2008)

"_Words, Phrases, Passages_ was just published recently," and is available for purchase here, available from the Mythopoeic Society. 

"Although Tolkien never completed the commentary as originally planned, he retained the more cursory list of words and names from which he was working; and he continued to compose further notes on the grammar and history of the Elvish words and names in the story. Many of these were placed together with _Words, Phrases and Passages,_ and the main commentary has been supplemented by these notes in this edition. Together these texts give the clearest picture we have of how Tolkien conceived of his linguistic inventions in the forms they were revealed to his readers."

Barley


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