Meril (no English translation given here) appears in the current (Post–
Lord of the Rings) version of the
Silmarillion as the wife of Felagund and mother of Gilgalad in
The War of the Jewels (
HoME 11), page 242. I don’t find her in
The Shaping of Middle-earth (
HoME 4) at all.
Christopher Tolkien notes:
Felagund’s wife Meril has not been named before, nor any child of his, and this is the first appearance of Gil-galad from The Lord of the Rings.
Meril was also the Sindarin name given to Rose Cotton in Tolkien’s Epilogue to
The Lord of the Rings in Aragorn’s letter to Sam and his family. See
Sauron Defeated (
HoME 9) and a transcription of the English letter at
http://theshirefellowship.net/index....topic&pid=9881 . In the first version of the letter
Meril appears as
Beril, but in later versions as
Meril. In the
Book of Lost Tales the name
Meril seems to mean ‘Flower’ in general, not ‘Rose’ in particular.
I don’t see any reason to think that Tolkien ever rejected the meaning ‘rose’ for Sindiarin
meril. But, as usual, one never knows. Phonetically I see no problem with
Meril as a Sindarin name in Tolkien’s late conception.