Galathil was a little-known member of the royal family of Doriath and was, at least according to one source, the grand-nephew of King Thingol. Following this account, Galathil was said to be the brother of Celeborn, and both were sons of Galadhon. Galadhon was in turn the son of Elmo, younger brother of Elwë, as Thingol had been formerly known.
We know almost nothing about Galathil, his life or his fate. His grandfather Elmo was said to have remained in Doriath with his brother the King, and there are indications that his descendants did so, too. It is perhaps notable that Galathil and his close relations all have names deriving from Elvish tree-words, which would be appropriate for dwellers in the forest land of Doriath.
Galathil was probably2 the father of Nimloth, who would wed Thingol's grandson Dior. No other definitive details of his life exist, and he is not mentioned in the Silmarillion. Given that other members of his family were known to have remained in Doriath, we might expect that the same was true of Galathil - at least until the time of its sack by the Sons of Fëanor.
Notes
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We have no dates for Galathil, except that we know that his daughter Nimloth was slain in the fall of Menegroth in I 506, and so Galathil himself must have predated that year (presumably by some considerable time). We have no information about his fate, but the fact that he is never mentioned after the end of the First Age implies that it is at least possible that he fell at the same time as his daughter in the sack of Menegroth.
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Galathil and his family are mentioned by Christopher Tolkien in Unfinished Tales, based on notes to the Tale of Years of the First Age. These notes are given more fully in volume XI of The History of Middle-earth, but even there they do not present a complete narrative, and leave Galathil's status somewhat vague. In particular, while Tolkien seems to have intended that he was Nimloth's father, one version of the text presents an alternative view, and suggests that Nimloth was instead the sister of Galathil and Celeborn.
It should also be said that other versions of Celeborn's history exist in which he was not a relation of Thingol at all. What little we're told about Galathil and his people, however, does come from very late material and, if not absolutely conclusive, it does seem to at least suggest the direction of Tolkien's thoughts on the matter.
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