Hobbits?

While we're on the topic, goldfish are the result of centuries of selective breeding of carp. Can't imagine two more different fish, but they're the same species.

Ditto bulldogs and poodles

Horses and ponies......

Or Serbs and Zulus, or Greeks and Turks...

Or Sindar and Noldor. (??? questionable)

Ah, I see easterlinge. Thanks for the explanation, although it would have been more fitting to say something rude in your turn. But wait a minute, ... what about the ancestor of the Tooks, now?

Not the Sindar and Noldor. By the time Elwe was found after being lossed in Nan Elmoth, after which he took up his rightful claim of High Kingship of the Teleri (in Middle-earth), the Noldor were already in Tirion upon Tuna in the Blessed Land. That is, the people who eventually came to be called the Sindar were those Teleri who were (a) a part of Olwe's Host, persuaded by Ossë to remain in Middle-earth, or (b) the friends of Elwë who were left behind when Olwë left, in search of their lord. Nowë was their leader (later called CÃ*rdan). The 'a' people were called the Falathrim, that is, the Host of the Foaming Shore. The 'b' people called themselves the Eglath, or the Forsaken People. These were the folk who made up the 'Sindar' when Elwë took up the High Kingship, although they didn't have that (Quenya) name yet.

When Elwë came forth from Nan Elmoth with Melian, the friends of Elwe settled in Eglador (later called Doriath), and called themselves, as well as their brethren ruled by Nowë the Edhil, which Tolkien simply translates 'Elves'. But the Falathrim were somewhat a people apart and retained the old name 'Teleri' for themselves, or in later Sindarin Telir or Telerrim.

But by the time the Noldor returned to Middle-earth, (where they would eventually give the Edhil their famous name: ) the Sindar included the Falathrim, the Mithrim (named after the land they dwelt in, or vice-versa), those of Nevrast and those of Doriath. These last were actually a mixture of Sindar and Nandor from Ossiriand, some of the Laiquendi had left their home for the Guarded Realm after the death of their first and last King on Amon Ereb in the first battle of the Wars of Beleriand. There were probably still some homeless travelers left over from that battle, too.

So many names, So lil' memory.

Elenna ~ Lady of the Stars

"But wait a minute, ... what about the ancestor of the Tooks, now?"


Don't you remember in "the Hobbit", that is was said that Bandobras Took's ancestor was a fairy (elf?) ?

Gee.....all this mushy mushy stuff........

Elenna ~ Lady of the Stars

Nope, didn't remember that at all.

Where'd you hear that? You got me curious.

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He read it in The Hobbit.

Do you want me to delete that, Mandos?

Thanks. I should have figured that.

I thought that species could branch off and form new subcatergoies in the way that petty dwarves split off from "regular" dwarves.

[Ñólendil]

The Petty Dwarves were outcasts. They are a very sad element in Dwarvish history:

The great Dwarves despised the Petty-dwarves, who were (it is said) the descendants of Dwarves who had left or been driven out from the Communities, being deformed or undersized, or slothful and rebellious.

---The War of the Jewels, Quendi and Eldar