Legolas

In J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Legolas Greenleaf is a Sindarin Elf who becomes a part of the Fellowship of the Ring. With his keen eyesight, sensitive hearing, and excellent bowmanship, Legolas is a valuable resource to the other eight members of the Fellowship. Tolkien himself states, however, that Legolas accomplishes the least of the nine members of the Fellowship.

Legolas' name

The name Legolas is a Silvan dialect form of pure Sindarin Laegolas, Greenleaf. It consists of the Sindarin words laeg, green; and golas, a collection of leaves, foliage (being a prefixed collective form of las(s), leaf). The Quenya form (mentioned in the Book of Lost Tales in the context of another character of that name) is Laiqualassë.

Related Topics:
Silvan - Sindarin - Quenya

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There might, however, be a certain meaning to his name: laeg is a very rare, archaic word for green, which is normally replaced by calen (cf. Calenhad, mutated Parth Galen and plural Pinnath Gelin) and is otherwise almost only preserved in Laegrim, Laegel(d)rim (Sindarin form of Quenya Laiquendi), the Green Elves of the First Age. It may be that Thranduil named his son Legolas to at least in part refer to this people, who were remote kin and ancestors of the later Silvan Elves, the people Thranduil ruled and to whom - very likely - Thranduil's wife belonged.

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