Tolkien wrestled with the ORcs from Elves idea ad tried to discard it entirely [see Morgoth's Ring - section 5 Myths Transofrmed].
He had however problems with all of his replacement ideas:
1- orcs were really clever animals imbued with a certain power o Morgoth and or Sauron. Bereft of their controlling will they just replayed mechanical actions - I hate, I will kill etc...
2 - orcs as degenerate Men. This was I think for JRRT the optimum solution BUT it hinged on his abandoning the flat earth [pre-numenorean] world and having a pre-exisisting Sun - so Men would awaken early - before Mekor was captured the first time and then released.
He went back and forth on these ideas - nothing definitive.
As far as I understand it[I have been researching this for an entry on the Avari] the only canonical thing you can say about orc origins is that 'within the legendarium' some elves and men believed Elves [specifically captured Avari in some accounts] to be the origin of orcs. This however as I said before was severla times accounted as a myth, though no satisfactory resolution was ever perfectly decided.
If I have any details wrong hopefully some of the real scholars round these parts will fix it up.
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The dwindling Men of the West would often sit up late into the night exchanging lore & wisdom such as they still possessed that they should not fall back into the mean estate of those who never knew or indeed rebelled against the Light.
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