Secretive data company Palantir just officially revealed its plans to go public. Here's why it's named after an all-powerful seeing stone in the 'Lord of the Rings'

• Palantir, the data-mining company co-founded by Peter Thiel, was named after a mystical, all-powerful seeing stone in "Lord of the Rings."
• One of the story's villains, the wizard Saruman, uses a "palantir" to surveil his enemies.
• The stone's power and limitless knowledge corrupt Saruman and allow him to be manipulated, leading to his downfall.

Palantir, the secretive and controversial Silicon Valley data firm, is gearing up to go public — and the company just detailed its highly-anticipated plans to do so via a direct listing.

In an S-1 filed Tuesday, the company disclosed its stock-listing documents for the first time, revealing details of Palantir's planned stock structure, its execs' multi-million-dollar salaries, and the fact that it's never been profitable.

It was founded in 2003 by some of the "PayPal mafia," including now billionaire investor and Trump adviser Peter Thiel. He, along with the rest of the Valley's inner circle, harbors a deep-seated obsession with J.R.R. Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" — so much so that Palantir's founders opted for a moniker inspired by a magical object in the fantastical universe.

The palantiri are a collection of indestructible crystal stones used in Tolkien's fictional Middle Earth as a means of "far-seeing" communication.

The wizard Saruman uses one of the all-powerful seeing stones to surveil his foes and is ultimately corrupted by the unbounded knowledge that it provides him. Sauron — the main villain in the books and the films — reaches Saruman through the palantir and manipulates him into doing his bidding.

Critic and leading Tolkien scholar Jane Chance Nitzsche wrote that Saruman uses the stone to "seek Godlike knowledge by gazing in a short-sighted way" into the palantir. By opting for "mere knowledge" instead of actual wisdom, the wizard eventually met his downfall.

In the movie, you might also remember Peregrin "Pippin" Took mischievously snatching a palantir while Gandalf and the others are asleep. He and the rest of the story's heroes continuously dodge their enemies' line of sight in order to complete their main quest: destroying the One Ring and ridding Middle Earth of such a source of evil.

Palantir, the tech firm, creates software that gives its customers a wide-ranging, searchable database to find what they're looking for. So naming the company after an object that provides a broad scope of sight might seem fitting.

But Palantir has drawn criticism for partnering with law enforcement agencies including ICE. Its ICE contract came under scrutiny from 15 members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, who also questioned whether Palantir was sharing people's health data with ICE. Palantir denied that it shares data between the different federal agencies. An HHS spokesperson also denied that the data was being shared.

Palantir isn't the only tech company connected to Thiel that bears a LOTR-inspired name and has drawn criticism.

He was an early investor in military-contracting startup Anduril, which was named after the magical sword in the series that was wielded by the trilogy's hero, Aragorn. The company, founded by Palmer Luckey in 2017, was recently awarded a contract with US Customs and Border Protection to build a virtual "wall" as a means to prevent illegal crossings into the US. The system will utilize surveillance towers to detect movement.

Fans of the beloved books have taken issue with companies that have names inspired by "Lord of the Rings" and work with border authorities like CBP.

"It's really not even close to the point, but between this and [Palantir], wtf is up with tech bros using Lord of the Rings names for their big data services for the military?" a Twitter user said last year. "Did I miss some pro-war/surveillance message in Tolkien's work?"

• Read more about Palantir's direct listing:
• Palantir called out China in its S-1, saying that working with the Chinese communist party is 'inconsistent with our culture and mission
• Palantir will have a stock structure that ensures its 3 founders will remain in control 'for the foreseeable future'
• Palantir says it hasn't turned a profit any year since its founding in 2003, and warns that it may never make money
• Palantir CEO uses public filing to attack Silicon Valley as unpatriotic 'engineering elites' and ally itself with the Trump administration
• Secretive surveillance company Palantir says activists' criticisms could hurt its business — but so could addressing their concerns
• The CEO of secretive data analysis startup Palantir made over $12 million last year, and will get $800,000 in travel stipends in 2020