Whether they were meant for puns for not, the names in Tolkien's words were definately not random. He was a linguist you know. Grap a copy of "The Langauges of Tolkien's Middle-earth" by Ruth S. Noel, it gives a lot of translations for names that I hadn't seen anywhere else. For example, you were talking about Gimli: It's Old Norse for "lee of flame" and "highest heaven". And add a second 'n' and an accent to the second 'a' in Gandalf and it's Old Norse for "sorceror elf". Weird huh?
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