What's up with Celeborn?

[William Cloud Hicklin]

What I was referring to was the fact that, while writing the Lorien chapters, probably in 1941, Tolkien quickly elevated Galadriel to a Noldorin princess but Celeborn remained what they both first appeared as: a native Silvan ruler. Judging by the writings of the late 30's and the absence of any counterindication in the LR text up to that point, the creation of the 'Nandor' still lay ahead, prob. about 1951-52. In QS and the later Annals, the Danians or Pereldar (half-Eldar) appear, but it's clear that all of them entered Beleriand and became the Green-elves. Certainly the Wood-elves of The Hobbit were envisioned at the time as Avari, and all the evidence seems to point to the conclusion that, as of 1941, Tolkien didn't conceive of the Silvan natives of Lorien as being any different, or of any Eldar existing east of the Mountains besides G. herself.

It's interesting that even so late as 1963, by which time Celeborn was unquestinably a Sinda (it appears), T would use the phrase "that branch of the Elves that, in the First Age, was so in love with Middle-earth that they had refused the call of the Valar;" which, literally, defined the Avari (the Sindar of course didn't refuse; they missed the boat looking for Thingol).