True, but those roots are also coming from the readers, not Tolkien. He wrote that he regretted calling the Eldar "Elves", because at his time, the word was used for diminutive, whimsical fairy creatures. That's why we depict them with pointy ears. Nowhere in Tolkien's work are the Eldar described with pointy ears. Originally, the Noldor were called Gnomes. Imagine if he kept the name... Now, the Eldar were inspired in part by the "Alfr" of the Norse Eddas, but not that much. And I didn't know anything about those when I first read the Hobbit. So nothing was telling me the Elves were supposed to be some kind of demigods living in the topmost level of the World Tree (which I also knew nothing about). And when you read about a couple of Elven guards getting piss drunk, it's hard to see Elves as ethereal creatures...