The name 'Galadriel' came not from her father or her mother - they had named her Artanis and Nerwen, respectively. Instead, it came from her husband Celeborn, who gave her a name meaning 'Maiden crowned with a radiant garland.' The origins of this new name are obscure and somewhat confused, but it seems to have originated in the Telerin language as Alatáriel, which translates into Sindarin as the much better-known 'Galadriel'. Altáriel is the Quenya form of the same name.
It should be noted that there is some degree of confusion over the exact spelling of this name. In Unfinished Tales it appears as Altáriel, but in The Shibboleth of Fëanor (in volume XII of The History of Middle-earth) the same name appears in unaccented form as Altariel. There doesn't appear to be any direct evidence bearing on which of these is the definitive form.
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- Updated 30 April 2016
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