Quoth Tolkien in Appendix F of LOTR:
"Meriadoc was chosen to fit the fact that this character's shortened name, Kali, meant on the Westron 'jolly, gay', though it was actually an abbreviation of the now unmeaning Buckland name Kalimac."
In other words no one remembers the origin of the word "kalimac", which evidently was something else, but the nickname based off of it, "kali", means "merry, happy".
A simple glance will show that "kali" is from the same root as gelir, which is Aragorn's translation of Merry in the King's Letter. So many people have assumed gelir translates "merry" directly just like "kali", and is an adjective. But parts of speech aren't necessarily the same between different languages. In fact, gelir is probably "happy person". That's how it's defined in D. Willis' excellent dictionary, and I see why: meldir "friend", hirdir "master", bauglir "tyrant", randir "wanderer", etc. -ir tends to get used to mean "person". So we're assuming it's gell, "joy", with "person" tacked onto the end.
At any rate, if you use gelir to describe a happy person, I suggest that you treat it as a noun. For things, activities, and events, use meren instead. In the ETYMOLOGIES, beren is given as an adjective for "festive, joyful" (D. Willis' dictionary changes it to meren for phonological reasons that are beyond me). I'm betting meren mostly refers to events and actions, because it's related to the word for "feast, festival."
This all being my own opinion and in no way supported by ye experts.
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