I get asked about Elf ears so often I have been collecting citations since the Summer of 1999. These notes represent my current knowledge of references in Tolkien to how his Elves appeared.

There are two "pointed ear" references that people like to refer to when arguing that Tolkien's Elves must have had pointed ears. I will address them here first:

In "The Etymologies" in THE LOST ROAD AND OTHER WRITINGS, Volume V of THE HISTORY OF MIDDLE-EARTH, Tolkien wrote:

  Las (1) *lasse  'leaf': Q lasse, N lhass;  Q lasselanta
  'leaf-fall, autumn',  N lhasbelin (*lassekwelene),  cf. Q
  Narquelion [ KWEL ].  Lhasgalen  'Greenleaf' (Gnome name of
  Laurelin).  (Some think this is related to the next and *lasse
  'ear'.  The Quendian ears were more pointed and leaf-shaped
  than [human].)

  Las(2) listen.  N lhaw ears (of one person), old dual *lasu --
  whence singular lhewig.  Q lar, lasta- listen; lasta
  listening, hearing -- Lastalaika 'sharp-ears', a name, cf.
  N Lhathleg.  N lathron hearer, listener, eavesdropper
  (<*la(n)sro-ndo); lhathro or lhathrado listen, eavesdrop.

The "[]" around the word "human" is an indication by Christopher Tolkien that he could not read the original word and was guessing at what it might be. He felt the guess was doubtful.

"The Etymologies" dates from the mid-1930s (with a few later entries) and is therefore pre-HOBBIT and pre-LOTR material, not directly associated with the "published world". Tolkien made many changes and additions to this world after he was asked by Allen & Unwin to write a sequel to THE HOBBIT.

In Letter 27, written to the Houghton Mifflin Company soon after their publication of THE HOBBIT (at the beginning of 1938) Tolkien wrote the following description of hobbits:

  I picture a fairly human figure, not a kind of 'fairy' rabbit
  as some of my British reviewers seem to fancy: fattish in the
  stomach, shortish in the leg.  A round, jovial face; ears only
  slightly pointed and 'elvish'; hair short and curling (brown).
  The feet from the ankles down, covered with brown hairy fur.
  Clothing: green velvet breeches; red or yellow waistcoat; brown
  or green jacket; gold (or brass) buttons; a dark green hood
  and cloak (belonging to a dwarf).

The reference to "elvish" here can only be taken to mean "elvish" as in "elfin", according to current folklore about elves and pixies and fairies. This was well before Tolkien had begun to work on THE LORD OF THE RINGS seriously (he was about to stall out in another couple of months after getting only through the first three chapters) and no one at Houghton Mifflin would have understood references to his own Elves, since they are not given full descriptions in THE HOBBIT itself (except as "tall" and a bit silly but noble and good-hearted, which is quite different from the elves of modern folklore). The only individual
Elf who is described is Thranuil (the Elvenking of THE HOBBIT), and he is said only to have golden hair.

Questions to ask of people who are certain of their logic and/or
"facts" concerning Tolkien's Elves include:

1) What kind of leaf did Tolkien have in mind?

2) If it's so certain that the last word is "human", why was Christopher in grave doubt?

3) Which way did the point go -- up or down?

4) Why is it that Tolkien did not give Elves pointed ears in his drawings/paintings of them? (The only two Elven representations I know of, published in J.R.R. TOLKIEN: ARTIST & ILLUSTRATOR, by Wayne Hammond and Christina Scull, are "Taur-na-Fuin" and "Halls of Manwe".)

[Note -- in previous discussions on the Internet I have said that
"Taur-na-Fuin" showed pointed ears, but upon re-examining the picture in 1998, I couldn't find them or what I thought would be pointed ears.]

So, if Tolkien's Elves did not have pointed ears, then how was it so obvious to people in Tolkien's world who was and who wasn't an Elf? The answer appears to be two-fold: the Elves had easily distinguishable voices. They did not sound like Men. And they also had an "Elven-light" in their eyes. This light was most pronounced in those Elves who had seen the light of the Two Trees, but I will demonstrate that others Elves possessed it as well.

Now here are some citations concerning how the Eldar and Edain appeared. All page references are to Houghton Mifflin hardback editions.

There are several passages which speak of the physical similarities between Elves and Men in youth:

  [The Eldar grew in bodily form slower than Men, but in mind
  more swiftly.  They learned to speak before they were one year
  old; and in the same time they learfned to walk and to dance,
  for their wills came soon to the mastery of their bodies.
  Nonetheless there was less difference between the two Kindreds,
  Elves and Men, in early youth; and a man who watched
  Elf-children at play might well have believed that they were
  the children of Men, of some fair and happy people....
  From MORGOTH'S RING, p. 209-10, opening paragraph to the essay
  on laws and customs among the Eldar)

And:

All these were caught in the net of the Doom of the Noldor; and
they did great deeds which the Eldar remember still among the
histories of the Kings of old....The Men of the Three Houses
throve and multiplied, but greatest among them was the house of
Hador Goldenhead, peer of Elven-lords. His people were of
great strength and stature, ready in mind, bold and steadfast,
quick to anger and to laughter, mighty among the Children of
Iluvatar in the youth of Mankind. Yellow- haired they were for
the most part, and blue-eyed; but not so was Turin, whose
mother was Morwen of the house of Beor. The Men of that house
were dark or brown of hair, with grey eyes; and of all Men they
were most like the Noldor and most loved by them; for they were
eager of mind, cunning-handed, swift in understanding, long in
memory, and they were moved sooner to pity than to laughter....
(From THE SILMARILLION, Hougton-Mifflin Edition, p.148, second
before last paragraph in "Of the Coming of Men into the West")

Some variations of the above have appeared in various texts in THE HISTORY OF MIDDLE-EARTH.

And:

In "Narn i Hin Hurin" Turin asks Sador if his sister Urwen (Lalaith) had really been like an Elf-child.

  'Very like,' said Sador; 'for in their first youth the children
  of Men and Elves seem close akin.   But the children of Men
  grow more swiftly, and their youth passes soon; such is our
  fate.'

And:

  ...There were fair-haired men and women among the Folk of Beor,
  but most of them had brown hair (going usually with brown
  eyes), and many were less fair in skin, some indeed being
  swarthy.  Men as tall as the Folk of Hador were rare among
  them, and most were broader and more heavy in build. [46]  In
  association with the Eldar, especially with the followers of
  King Finrod, they became enhanced in arts and manners as the
  Folk of Hador, but if these surpassed them in swiftness and of
  mind and body, in daring and noble generosity, [47] the Folk
  of Beor were more steadfast in endurance of hardship and
  sorrow, slow to tears or laughter; their fortitude needed no
  hope to sustain it.  But these differences of mind and body
  became less marked as their short generations passed, for the
  two peoples became much mingled by intermarriage and by the
  disasters of the War. [48]
  (From THE PEOPLES OF MIDDLE-EARTH, p. 308, in the essay on the
  Atani)

The notes read:

  46  Beren the renowned had hair of a golden brown and grey
  eyes; he was taller than most of his kin, but he was
  broad-shouldered and very strong in his limbs.
  47  The Eldar said, and recalled in the songs they sang in
  later days, that they could not easily be distinguished from
  the Eldar -- not while their youth lasted, the swift fading of
  which was to the Eldar a grief and a mystery.
  48  [With this account of the Folk of Beor and the Folk of
  Hador may be compared that description that my father wrote
  many years before in *Quenta Silmarillion*, V.276, $130.]

In "Of Tuor and his Coming to Gondolin", which was pubished in UNFINISHED TALES, when Tuor and Voronwe are first challenged by Elemmakil, captain of the Guard which held the gates to the hidden city, Elemmakil says:

  'This is strange in you, Voronwe,' he said.  'We were long
  friends.  Why then would you set me thus cruelly between the
  law and my friendship?  If you had led hither unbidden one of
  the other houses of the Noldor, that were enough.  But you have
  brought to knowledge  of the Way a mortal Man -- for by his
  eyes I perceive his kin.  Yet free can he never again go,
  knowing the secret; and as one of alien kin that has dared to
  enter, I should slay him -- even though he be your friend and
  dear to you.'

And in the "Tale of Aragorn and Arwen" Tolkien mentions that Aragorn did not at first recognize Arwen's Elvish heritage:

  'The next day at the hour of sunset Aragorn walked alone in the
  woods, and his heart was high within him: and he sang, for he
  was full of hope and the world was fair.  And suddenly even as
  he sang he saw a maiden walking on a greensward among the white
  stems of the birches; and he halted amazded, thinking that he
  had strayed into a dream, or else that he had received the gift
  of the Elf-minstrels, who can make the things of which they
  sing appear before the eyes of those that listen.
  'For Aragorn had been singing a part of the Lay of Leithian
  which tells of the meeting of Luthien and Beren in the forest
  of Neldoreth.  And behold! there Luthien walked before his eyes
  in Rivendell, clad in a mantle of silver and blue, fair as the
  twilight in Elven-home; her dark hair strayed in a sudden wind,
  and her brows were bound with gens like stars.'

When Aragorn calls out to Arwen she stops and speaks with him, and soon reveals that she is Elrond's daughter. When Aragorn is amazed that he, who had lived most of his life in Rivendell, had never met her before:

  'Then Aragorn wondered, for she had seemed of no greater age
  than he, who had lived yet no more than a score of years in
  Middle-earth.  But Arwen looked in his eyes and said: "Do not
  wonder!  For the children of Elrond have the life of the
  Eldar."
  'Then Aragorn was abashed, for he saw the elven-light in her
  eyes and the wisdom of many days; yet from that hour he loved
  Arwen Undomiel daughter of Elrond.'

So here we see that Arwen, who was born in Middle-earth in the year 241 of the Third Age, to parents who had both also been born in Middle-earth and never saw the Light of the Two Trees, possessed the Elven-light in her eyes. Had Aragorn not been so taken with her beauty, he probably would have noticed her eyes without having to be told of what she was.

Also, when Legolas meets Prince Imrahil (in "The Last Debate" in
THE RETURN OF THE KING) no mention is made of ears as an identifying feature that cues Legolas to Imrahil's Elvish ancestry. And Legolas certainly doesn't mention any light in Imrahil's eyes, which are merely sea-grey like those of all the Dunedain of Arnor and Gondor.

Speaking of Imrahil, there is a questionable statement in UNFINISHED TALES about the beardlessness of Imrahil which implied his Elvish ancestry:

  In a note written in December 1972 or later, and among the last
  writings of my father's on the subject of Middle-earth, there
  is a discussion of the Elvish strain in Men, as to its being
  observable in the beardlessness of those who were so descended
  (it was a characteristic of all Elves to be beardless); and it
  is here noted in connection with the princely house of Dol
  Amroth that 'this line had a special Elvish strain, according
  to its own legends' (with a reference to the speeches between
  Legolas and Imrahil in THE RETURN OF THE KING V 9, cited
  above).
  (from "The History of Galadriel and Celeborn", "Amroth and
  Nimrodel" in UNFINISHED TALES)

Cirdan's beard is often a matter of puzzlement to many people, but it has been noted that Theoden had a long beard, and his ancestors included the Princes who were the Lords of Dol Amroth. And since the note referred to above is from the last year of Tolkien's life, it should be regarded as possibly one of the major revisions he contemplated but never completed for the whole cycle. Also, the Elf Beleg in the "Taur-nu-Fuin" painting by Tolkien had a beard.

And the statue of the king which Frodo looks at near the crossroads in Ithilien (before he enters Morgul vale) apparently has a beard. The kings were, of course, Elrosians. Tolkien mentions (in "The Heirs of Elendil" in THE PEOPLES OF MIDDLE-EARTH) that the Stewards were ultimately of royal origin, and hence were themselves Elrosians (although most likely by a daughter's line somewhere). And yet Denethor, too, may have had a long beard (he is compared to Theoden and Gandalf by Peregrin).

Elves were "fair of face", according to Tolkien. He doesn't really provide any detail about that, beyond descriptions like this one of Legolas:

  Together the Elf and Dwarf entered Minas Tirith, and folk that
  saw them pass marvelled to see such companions; for Legolas was
  fair of face beyond the measure of Men, and he sang an
  elven-song in a clear voice as he walked in the morning; but
  Gimli stalked beside him, stroking his beard and staring about
  him.
  (From "The Last Debate" in THE RETURN OF THE KING)

We know that Elves were tall, slender, and fair-skinned. But those seem to be the only universally distinguishing physical features. Some of them had "lights" in their eyes (the High Elves, the Noldor who had lived in Aman, apparently) and they all seem to have had "clear" and "musical" voices. I would be surprised to find a baritone among them.

Tolkien tried to distance his Elves from more "traditional" Elves on more than one occasion, as he wrote in Letter 151:

  Also I now deeply regret having used Elves, though this is a
  word in ancestry and original meaning suitable enough.  But the
  disastrous debasement of this word, in which Shakespeare played
  an unforgivable part, has really overloaded it with regrettable
  tones, which are too much to overcome.

In fact, Tolkien stated that Elves and Men were biologically the same race:

  I suppose that actually the chief difficulties I have involved
  myself in are scientific and biological -- which worry my just
  as much as the theological and metaphysical (though you do not
  seem to mind them so much).  Elves and Men are evidently in
  biological terms one race, or they could not breed and produce
  fertile offspring -- even as a rare event: there are 2
  cases only in my legends of such unions, and they are merged
  in the descendants of *Earendil*.  But since some have held
  that the rate of longevity is a biological characteristic,
  within limits of variation, you could not have Elves in a sense
  'immortal' -- not eternal, but not dying by 'old age' -- and
  Men mortal, more or less as they now seem to be in the Primary
  World -- and yet suffciently akin.  I might answer that this
  'biology' is only a theory, that modern 'gerontology', or
  whatever they call it, finds 'ageing' rather more mysterious,
  and less clearly inevitable in bodies of human structure.
  But I should actually answer: I do not care.  This is a
  biological dictum in my imaginary world.  It is only (as
  yet) an incompletely imagined world, a rudimentary
  'secondary'; but if it pleased the Creator to give it (in
  a corrected form) Reality on any plane, then you would just
  have to enter it and begin studying its different biology,
  that is all.
  But as it is -- though it seems to have grown out of hand,
  so that parts seem (to me) rather revealed through me than
  by me -- its purpose is still largely literary (and, if you
  don't boggle at the term, didactic).  Elves and Men are
  represented as biologically akin in this 'history', because
  Elves are certain aspects of Men and their talents and
  desires, incarnated in my little world.  They have certain
  freedoms and powers we should like to have, and the beauty
  and peril and sorrow of the possession of these things is
  exhibited in them....
  [Letter 153 to Peter Hastings, September 1954, from
   THE LETTERS OF J.R.R. TOLKIEN]

Hence, if Men and Elves are biologically the same, they must share very similar physical characteristics which don't vary any more than is to be expected among other sub-groups of the same race. Pointed ears don't seem to fall into the category of distinguishing physical attributes which biology allows.

All that said, I've no doubt that people who want Tolkien's Elves to have pointed ears will continue to insist they must have had them despite the immense amount of evidence to the contrary (and the virtual lack of any supporting evidence).

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