Oh, for crying out loud! Peter Jackson and Company just
had to do it! I mean, just when I thought we had driven a wooden stake through undead heart of this ludicrous elf-chick-in-
The-Hobbit idea, that awful, queasy feeling in the pit of the stomach returns:
"... the biggest news is LOST star Evangeline Lilly will be Tauriel. PJ describes Tauriel as a Woodland Elf, ‘Her name means ‘daughter of Mirkwood’ and, beyond that, we must leave you guessing! (No, there is no romantic connection to Legolas.)‘ "
Just for starters, the calendar entry in Appendix B of
The Lord of the Rings for the year 1050 states:
"About this time a shadow falls on Greenwood, and men begin to call it Mirkwood"
So I must inquire why
any elf of
Greenwood Forest would have a name derived from what
men only began to call the same forest
after it became infected by the "evil power" that had "made a stronghold at Dol Guldur." I mean, wouldn't a real (and really old) elf have a name like "Daughter of Greenwood" and not something that -- etymologically -- sounds more like "Daughter of the Necromancer" or "Daughter of Sauron"? Wouldn't all of the other elves just call her "Mirky" for short, because of the shadow that seems to follow her everywhere she goes?
Come to think of it, if this newly-relabeled Itaril (I mean "Tauriel") has a name derived from what men called the forest after it became evil, then wouldn't that make the newly-relabeled elf-chick less than 1050 years old (assuming that elves get their names at birth) and a mere child among that immortal race? Just think about this for a minute -- and it shouldn't take much longer than that -- and you can see the sloppy thinking and disregard for Tolkien's created world that went into this bogus "name."
Furthermore, putting purely linguistic considerations aside (which Professor Tolkien would
never have done), the forcible injecting of an unnecessary elf-chick into an adolescent English schoolboy story like
The Hobbit sounds as heretical as letting Vicky Vale into the Bat Cave or Lois Lane into the Fortress of Solitude. Some things you just don't do without undermining the entire foundation of the genre.
The whole idea sounds stupid, and the stupid new name for "stupid" -- i.e., "idiotic" -- sounds just as dumb. A pseudonym by any other misnomer would stlll stink as badly.