Ambiguity in LotR

Lord of the Rings, and Tolkien’s whole legendarium by extension, could be called a mastery of the fantasy genre for a variety of reasons. His story is inventive, his prose is simple yet powerful, but most importantly, every name and word has its own background or story. As we know, names aren’t picked from thin air on a whim or at random; they are carefully considered in the background of Middle Earth, and each place or person has a part to play, whether large or small. The origin of most of the Elvish words is pretty methodical, as Tolkien

devised them from within the historical structure, proceeding from the ‘bases’ or primitive stems, adding suffix or prefix or forming compounds, deciding (or, as he would have said, ‘finding out’) when the word came into the language, following through the regular changes of form that it would thus have undergone, and observing the possibilities of formal or semantic influence from other words in the course of its history. Such a word would then exist for him, and he would know it. As the whole system evolved and expanded, the possibilities for word and name became greater and greater (Lost Road 379).

This makes it seem like the meaning of most words in Lord of the Rings should be pretty straightforward, or at least a matter of there being one correct answer. In letter 347, a case of there only being one right answer occurs a few times, despite the fact that the other guesses seem to be plausible, as in response to the question of whether Aragorn can contain some reference to trees,

Aragorn etc. This cannot contain a ‘tree’ word…’ Tree-King would have no special fitness for him, and it was already used by an ancestor. The names in the line of Arthedain are peculiar in several ways; and several, though S. in form, are not readily interpretable. But it would need more historical records and linguistic records of S. than exist…to explain them. The system by which all the names from Malvegil onwards are trisyllabic, and have only one ‘significant’ element (ara being used where the final element was of one syllable; but ar in other cases) is peculiar to this line of names. The ara is prob. derived from cases where aran ‘king’ lost its n phonetically (as Arathorn), ara- then being used in other cases (pg. 426).

Clearly according to Tolkien there is really only one valid interpretation for the origin of the name Aragorn, despite how seemingly likely it is that there is some reference to the white tree of Gondor, Nimloth. Though not every example of ambiguity is solved by an interjection from Tolkien; for example, in the case of Galadriel (at least this is as far as I am aware, and just based on his notes in the etymologies). There are a few options for the construction of her name: either we start with Gal-, Gala-, or Galad-, and already problems start to arise, since the former means shine, the middle means thrive or blessed, and the latter means tree. The rest of the clues we possess are that Ri- means edge or border, and that El- means star. So, either the latter is correct, and we can form Galadriel’s full name, or one of the former two are correct, and we are just missing a small piece of the name. Either way, any of the interpretations seem to work for this character. Starting with the first option, if her name starts with Gal-, then that could be a reference to the gift she gives Frodo when he leaves Lothlorien, a glass containing the light from the silmaril of Earendil. If instead we take the middle option, Gala-, then thrive or blessed works equally well, if not better, in this context. For example, out of all of the elves remaining in Middle Earth, Galadriel is one of the very few blessed with one of the elven rings. She is also described as one of the oldest and most powerful elves during the 3^rd Age; clearly, she has thrived in Middle Earth. However, the third option is also promising; Galad-, or tree, could be a reference to her eventually deciding to live in Lothlorien, and essentially serving as one of its protectors and guardians. There are two ways of looking at this ambiguity: either this is just a frustrating exception to the rule, or maybe, if not intentional, it gives the reader the opportunity to participate in the story. There is definitely evidence for both of these positions: from many of his correspondences, Tolkien does not seem like he appreciates any sense of vagueness in his languages, so the case of Galadriel could definitely be a deviation of the norm. However, I am inclined to see this in a different light. While I don’t believe that this ambiguity was purposeful, and I am sure that outside of the Etymology there have been many clarifications regarding proper names in Lord of the Rings, Galadriel included, I think that this gives the reader the opportunity of a small form of sub-creation. While the word may be made and the story already written, being able to play with the different stems, suffixes, prefixes, etc. available to us can give us the opportunity to attach our own meaning to the story and each of the characters, and make Middle Earth mean something much more personal and unique for each person.
 - SGK