Original elves still left

[Amarie of the Vanyar]

The legend of the awakening says that only 144 elves awoke at Cuiviénen. Three of them, Imin, Tata and Enel, awoke first, whith their wifes, and they awoke the rest of the elves they found spleeping. The people that followed Imin were the origin of the Vanyar; the followers of Tata, of the Noldor, and the peopleo of Enel, of the Teleri.
And their numbers were (including Imin, Tata and Enel):
Vanyar: 14 elves
Noldor: 56 elves
Teleri: 74 elves.

[mark12_30]

Originally Posted by Amarie of the Vanyar

Vanyar: 14 elves
Noldor: 56 elves
Teleri: 74 elves.

The original numbers are interesting-- I wonder what Tolkien had in mind when he came up with these numbers.

[the guy who be short]

Originally Posted by mark12_30

I wonder what Tolkien had in mind when he came up with these numbers.

"And they shall breed like rabbits..."

[mark12_30]

I was thinking more along the lines of, a projection of the future percentages of skills and inclinations within the elven population.

[the guy who be short]

Ah, you failed to specify, you see.

Well...

Then befell the first sundering of the Elves. For the kindred of Ingwë, and the most part of the kindreds of Finwë and Elwë, were swayed by the words of their lords, and were willing to depart and follow Oromë; and these were known ever after as the Eldar, by the name that Oromë gave to the Elves in the beginning, in their own tongue.

We know that all the Vanyar went to Valinor, but some of the Noldor and Teleri stayed behind.

The Vanyar's host was said to be the smallest. That makes sense, but I didn't realise it was that small - 14 out of 144 (note the importance of that number - the Eldar worked in 12s, 12 12s are 144) or 9.7%. We can presume, then, that only a tenth of all the Quendi were Vanyar.

Overall, then, 10% of all Elves were Vanyar.
38% were Of Noldorin kind, that is to say, they were either Noldor, or Moriquendi of the same type (and presumably good craftsmen?).
51.% were Teleri or Moriquendi of the same sort.

We can't really work anything else out. We have no idea how many Noldorin and Telerin Quendi became Moriquendi, though I'd presume it was a large part of the Telerin and a small part of the Noldorin Quendi.

In "Of the Flight of the Noldor" it is said

The Teleri has less strength [than the Noldor]

Can we take this to mean less people? If so, that would imply that a very large proportion of Telerin Elves stayed in Middle Earth - at least 25%, and that would be if none of the Noldorin Elves stayed behind (which is false). But that's a matter of interpretation, and makes more sense when we remember that the Noldor had all come prepared for battle, whereas the Teleri weren't prepared for a fight. I don't think much more can be said, certainly not about the Eldar in particular. The numbers reflect on the total population of the Quendi instead.

All this has been worked out on the presumption that the numbers Tolkien came up with are still relevant.