Dwarf names & characteristics

[Galin]

Hammond and Scull point out in Reader's Companion that Glóin means (the) glowing one, while Gimli means Little Fire or Spark. (Notes for "Council of Elrond")

I find this interesting Alcuin, as I hadn't noticed it yet in my copy. To dig a bit deeper about this name, Hammond and Scull quote Tolkien that poetic gim in archaic Old Norse is probably not related to gimm "gem" "... though possibly it was later asociated with it: its meaning seems to have been "fire" (JRRT, letter to Mr. Rang)...

... then they quote Manfred Zimmerman who writes: "Now if we treat Gimli as the diminutive of gim "fire", we would get a highy appropriate name for a son of the "Glowing One: "Little Fire" or "spark" Mythlore 11, no. 3

Tolkien's "gem" and "fire" are interesting with respect to a footnote from The Poetic Edda, translated by Lee M. Hollander...

I see a hall than the sun more fair,
thatched with red-gold, which is Gimlé* hight.
There will the gods all guiltless throne,
and live forever in ease and bliss

*"Gem-roof" or "Fire-shelter" It is worthy of note that in the corresponding passage in "Gylfaginning", Chapter 2. the abode of the blessed is called Gimlé, a fact which would lend strength to the former interpretation. It is difficult not to see in this stanza a reflection of the heavenly Jerusalem of the Apocalypse.

In my Prose Edda Gimlé is referred to as a hall, or seemingly the place of a hall, and is translated (J. Young) "Lee-of-fire". According to Carl Hostetter, Gimli is Old Norse for the site of the hall in which the righteous will dwell after the final conflagration, with a possible meaning 'Fire-lee'...

Not a Dwarf-name, but rather the site of the hall in which the righteous will dwell after the final conflagration. ?'Fire-lee' (...)

And one name, Gimle, if in fact the source of Gimli, is not even a Dwarf-name, but rather a place-name. (...)

If Gimlé is in fact the source of Gimli, Tolkien here changes an é (long upper-mid front unround) to i (short high front unround). Why? (As noted above, Cleasby-Vigfusson gives the reading Gimli; but Bellows uses Gimle, so this just defers the question.)

Cal Hostetter 1996, tolklang, X-Message-Number: 19.25

Anyway, not that that settles anything, but I'm interested in names

Interestingly Gimli was once the name of an Elf, and in the Gnomish language it meant "(sense of) hearing" with gim- "hear". The hearing of Gimli, the captive Gnome in the dungeons of Tevildo, "... was the keenest that had been in the world." Appendix, The Book of Lost Tales II

So there's that too