Legolas Greenleaf

A prince of the Silvan Elves

Dates: Legolas' date of birth is not known. He passed over the Sea in IV 120

Race: Elves

Division: Silvan Elves1

Culture: Elves of Mirkwood

Meaning: 'Legolas' means simply 'Green Leaf'

Titles: Greenleaf

Son of Thranduil, Lord of the Elves of Mirkwood. He set out from Rivendell with the Company of the Ring, and journeyed with Aragorn and Gimli through the southern lands of Middle-earth during the War of the Ring; he fought at the Battles of the Hornburg and the Pelennor Fields.

Notes

1 At least, Legolas seems to refer to himself as a Silvan Elf: in Eregion, he says '...the Elves of this land were of a race strange to us of the silvan folk...' (The Fellowship of the Ring II 3, The Ring Goes South). This is confusing, because his father Thranduil is elsewhere identified as one of the Sindar. Tolkien touches on this question in his Letters, where he describes Legolas as '...a Woodland Elf, though one of royal and originally Sindarin line.' (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien No 297, dated 1967, our italics). The explanation for this is found in the History of Galadriel and Celeborn (in Unfinished Tales), where there's a brief account of the arrival of Thranduil's father Oropher among the Silvan Elves of Greenwood the Great. It's made obvious there that Oropher and his small band of Sindar merged themselves completely with the Silvan people of the Wood, leaving behind their Sindarin inheritance. That's why Oropher's grandson Legolas thinks of himself as a Silvan Elf, rather than one of the Sindar.