What's in a name?

Sep 23, 2007 18:21

Oh fandom, I beg you. Please! Please stop with the bitching about the names in the "dreaded" epilogue. (I use quotes there because unlike the majority, I LIKE the epilogue ( Read more... )

hp, unpopular fandom opinions, rants, deathly hallows

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ladyblack888 September 23 2007, 22:45:58 UTC
Point.

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midnitemaraud_r September 23 2007, 22:53:47 UTC
By that logic, Sirius and Remus rhyme, too! :-P

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erastes September 23 2007, 22:44:53 UTC
I have to agree. The point of the book really is that everyone has a silly name!

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midnitemaraud_r September 23 2007, 22:55:36 UTC
That's exactly the point, but apparently it's a point people are only too happy to gloss over. *sigh*

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ladyblack888 September 23 2007, 22:45:31 UTC
*is quite shocked at seeing Hugo and Mafalda, and even Salazar, listed as odd names*
Cultures really are different...

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midnitemaraud_r September 23 2007, 23:02:12 UTC
Yes, they are different. I mean, you don't see a lot of Caucasian Christians naming their children Jesus, but it's a popular name in various Hispanic cultures. And even pronunciations of names are different from culture to culture - and there are translations, too. Juan/John, Jose/Joseph, Guillermo/William. And names go in and out of "style" over the course of generations.

Dorcas is a decently common name in Scotland, but not in America.

Salazar and Mafalda are common Portuguese names? Really? Cool!

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ladyblack888 September 23 2007, 23:21:02 UTC
Erm, you know, I know that... I just found it funny. ;)

Well, yeah. Hugo is awfully common and I was a bit surprised it was listed because, like you said, there's Hugo Boss and Hugo Weaving and there's Hugh, which is the same as Hugo. Mafalda was pretty threndy some 30 or 40 years ago and now you don't see that many kids named that, but still. As for Salazar... It's not allowed as a first name, but it's a common last name (in most countries in Europe you can only name you child with allowed names and with the legal spelling, like John, but not Jon, and here it's 1 or 2 first names, 1 or 2 of the mother's last name as middle name and 1 or 2 of your father's as last name (it's the reverse in Spain). You can't invent last names like Jolie). Salazar Slytherin, actually, was named after António Oliveira Salazar, the dictator we had here last century (JK says so in her site). Don't forget she started the first drafts of the series when she was living here and her oldest daughter is portuguese. :)

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midnitemaraud_r September 23 2007, 23:48:26 UTC
Hugo is not very common over here in the US. (and maybe it's just me, but it felt like a lot of the complaining about the names came from the American sector. Which I find a bit ironic - we have this odd sense of which names are 'unusual' yet we're a country of immigrants who bring family names with them. We're a walking, talking contradiction. :-P)

I'd forgotten that she started her drafts while living in Portugal. Very cool and interesting stuff that I never knew - or really, never gave much thought to - with regard to naming so thanks for sharing!

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inksheddings September 23 2007, 23:04:19 UTC
Ha! I was looking at a post like that today and all I could think was that most of the HP characters have pretty fucked up names, why complain about Albus Severus? And Hugo isn't actually all that bad, in my opinion. *shrugs*

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midnitemaraud_r September 23 2007, 23:09:14 UTC
No, Hugo isn't. It's not quite common, and still a bit unusual, but considering "Hugo Boss" and the actor Hugo Weaving, it's not like nobody has ever heard it before.

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inksheddings September 23 2007, 23:10:53 UTC
Plus Hugo is fun to say really fast.

HugoHugoHugoHugoHugoHugo....

Sorry, too much caffeine today. :P

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midnitemaraud_r September 23 2007, 23:14:58 UTC
*giggles*

Especially when you're Stephen Moffat and you won two of them two years in a row! :-P

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midnitemaraud_r September 23 2007, 23:24:54 UTC
Ha - if I hadn't seen the first movie before reading, I never would have known how to even pronounce Hermione! (I had forgotten Hermione was a character in A Winter's Tale, but I read that on my own a long time ago - it was never a play we studied formally in any of my Shakespeare classes so I never had to pronounce it outside my own head anyway. Really, the way I pronounce some things in my head would appall many people! :-P And considering we can't come to a consensus on "Regan"...)

But all the rants over the kids names just confounds me. Like it just came completely out of the blue for wizarding folk to have unusual names. Oy!

And yay puns! :-P

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midnitemaraud_r September 23 2007, 23:37:49 UTC
Well, knowing old musicals doesn't mean I know much about the actors who were in them. When I was little, Oklahoma and Carousel starred "Mrs. Partridge." :-P

That's why the internet invented the IMDB. :-P

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