wombat1138 (
wombat1138) wrote2006-02-09 01:34 am
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Onomastication, or, chewing on names.
I'm having one of my periodic eyerolls at some of the stuff at the Harry Potter Lexicon. Their contributors often display a great deal of hard work and creative thinking, but sometimes they don't get the proportions right. One particular bit that's lodged under my skin for ages is the persistence of their claim that Ginny Weasley's full first name (Ginevra) is an Italianate version of "Guinevere". It isn't. This isn't to say that JK Rowling might have thought it was-- I have no idea whether they've asked her, though they may well have the access to've done so-- but even if she did, it still isn't. Or at least Hanks and Hodges don't think so, instead describing it as the Italian form of "Genevieve" (namesake examplar, the patron saint of Paris, a nun who rallied her fellow Franks to resist the invading Huns; speculatively traced to Celtic roots meaning "woman" and "tribe/people"?). Of course, during the brief interval just now when I couldn't locate my copy of Hanks and Hodges to double-check my memory, I ended up checking my old paperback of Dunkling/Gosling instead, which does support the origin from "Guinevere", and through it (presumably) to the various Findabhair/Gwynhwyfar tangle of etymologies and Kewpie-heroines. Bah.
Of course, now that I've just imploded my intro, onward to snippiness about their listings of freshly dug-up twigs from the Black family tree.
"Dorea" may be meant to invoke a "golden" image what with the marriage into the Potter family; JKR is more likely to be familiar with Romance languages than bacteriology. OTOH, it could be meant as a feminine version of "Dorian" (as in Wilde's Gray), as "Doria" (as in Andrea) is sometimes used. Since the Blacks didn't disappear her off the tapestry, however, that last parenthetical bit may be an aringa rossa, as Dan Brown might render an interpretive dance while sneezing. (Gefiltefische.)
I think I'm forgetting something very obvious about "Callidora"-- something that sounds like "calidor" or "kelidor", as opposed to Tolkien's phrase "cellar door" as a non-rhotic ideal of mellifluity.
"Elladora" might possibly be an allusion to "Ellador", a major character in two feminist utopian novels by Charlotte Perkins Gilman; it might be loosely based on "heliodor" (yellow beryl, the zodiacal birthstone for Leo), meaning "gift of the sun"; it might even be a multilingual pun from the Spanish heladora, "ice(-cream)-making machine", though sadly I can't find any confirmation for the term being mirrored in Portuguese. "Nothing found", forsooth.
I wonder if "Belvina" might've been invented as a riff on the Ossianic "Malvina", which MacPherson seems to've drawn from mala mhin, "smooth brow". D/G specifically ascribes that etymology to Withycombe, which I really must remember to get a copy of one of these days, and also helpfully traces the Argentinian name for the Falkland Islands to the French Malouines and thence to something to do with a St. Malo. (More circumspectly, H/H simply says that the etymology for Las Malvinas is disputed but still non-Ossianic.)
D/G sez "Araminta" was invented by the playwright Sir John Vanbrugh for a 1705 play, The Confederacy. No roots are offered, leaving as an exercise for the reader to decide whether ara (altar) + mintha (minty-fresh plantstuff) seems like a better idea than a sideways version of Amanda ("woman who shall be loved" in the same grammatical sense of agenda as "things which shall be done"; ah, the future passive participle).
And now I think I shall wander off in search of an affordable copy of Withycombe, at least until I get distracted by ooh shiny thing.
Of course, now that I've just imploded my intro, onward to snippiness about their listings of freshly dug-up twigs from the Black family tree.
"Dorea" may be meant to invoke a "golden" image what with the marriage into the Potter family; JKR is more likely to be familiar with Romance languages than bacteriology. OTOH, it could be meant as a feminine version of "Dorian" (as in Wilde's Gray), as "Doria" (as in Andrea) is sometimes used. Since the Blacks didn't disappear her off the tapestry, however, that last parenthetical bit may be an aringa rossa, as Dan Brown might render an interpretive dance while sneezing. (Gefiltefische.)
I think I'm forgetting something very obvious about "Callidora"-- something that sounds like "calidor" or "kelidor", as opposed to Tolkien's phrase "cellar door" as a non-rhotic ideal of mellifluity.
"Elladora" might possibly be an allusion to "Ellador", a major character in two feminist utopian novels by Charlotte Perkins Gilman; it might be loosely based on "heliodor" (yellow beryl, the zodiacal birthstone for Leo), meaning "gift of the sun"; it might even be a multilingual pun from the Spanish heladora, "ice(-cream)-making machine", though sadly I can't find any confirmation for the term being mirrored in Portuguese. "Nothing found", forsooth.
I wonder if "Belvina" might've been invented as a riff on the Ossianic "Malvina", which MacPherson seems to've drawn from mala mhin, "smooth brow". D/G specifically ascribes that etymology to Withycombe, which I really must remember to get a copy of one of these days, and also helpfully traces the Argentinian name for the Falkland Islands to the French Malouines and thence to something to do with a St. Malo. (More circumspectly, H/H simply says that the etymology for Las Malvinas is disputed but still non-Ossianic.)
D/G sez "Araminta" was invented by the playwright Sir John Vanbrugh for a 1705 play, The Confederacy. No roots are offered, leaving as an exercise for the reader to decide whether ara (altar) + mintha (minty-fresh plantstuff) seems like a better idea than a sideways version of Amanda ("woman who shall be loved" in the same grammatical sense of agenda as "things which shall be done"; ah, the future passive participle).
And now I think I shall wander off in search of an affordable copy of Withycombe, at least until I get distracted by ooh shiny thing.