[William Cloud Hicklin]

Of course, what may have been in Tolkien's mind as much as anything was simply that published matter couldn't be changed, at least not easily (neither the Hobbit revisions nor the LR second edition were exactly planned), at least as much as reflecting the completely fictional "underlying truth."

OTOH, T loved to play Patience (Solitaire), and I think part of the "game" to him was working around the constraints of the cards as dealt, even though he had dealt them himself.

---------------

NB: I agree that a younger, more flexible Tolkien could have saved Beoran ros, simply by positing that Gondorian Sindarin was a "medieval" rather than a "classical" Sindarin, which like Latin in the ME had absorbed some vernacular loan-words. Ros' acceptance into Dunedainic Sindarin would have been all the more easy given that every Numenorean knew the name of their founding King. T of all people knew that living languages are never static!