'Dumbledore, A Personal Favourite White Boy?'

[borg-princess.livejournal.com]

Thought some of you may enjoy the read - I just came across this essay on Dumbledore that pleased me greatly. The facts are nothing new to us, of course, but they're outlined in a lovely cohesive discussion of his many flaws that fans tend to excuse or overlook.

And even though the author's not a Snape fan, I like that they acknowledged how Dumbledore screwed him over as well. I was of course furious with Dumbledore coming up with the plan to commit suicide via Snape (which unwittingly placed him in Voldemort's firing line over the Elder Wand), but I haven't thought of using the fact that this was done without informing the Order and thus squandering the possibility of any intel from Snape during DH. That could've been useful!

***The title refers to a term explained in a previous article, basically: "Personal Favorite White Boy (n.): A (usually white) male character who can commit acts ranging from “pretty damn douchey” to “outright atrocities”, but is constantly defended by or stanned for by a furious fan base who will go to any lengths to excuse their actions and vilify critics. A male fave who is portrayed as a precious cinnamon roll who are only ever victims and heroes, and anyone who says differently is evil or illiterate."

Comments

[nx74defiant.livejournal.com]

Yet was anything done about the curse that Voldemort had put on the position?

I don't think DD did bother to do anything. We never got any indentation that the great Dumbles tried and failed to break the curse. Or tried changing the class to get around the cures.

It would have been nice to see something showing Ginny had an input on her children's names. Like James being James Arthur. We do get Lily Luna - but were Ginny and Luna really that close? Why not Lily Molly?

[jana-ch.livejournal.com]

If James had been James Arthur (I approve!), would Al Sev have been Sirius Severus? Arrrrg!

I remember an excellent fanfic re-do of DH in which Harry’s second son was named Arthur S. Potter. It was left up to the reader to decide what the middle initial stood for. And yes, he was a Slytherin, but it was not any sort of “issue.”

[oryx_leucoryx]

Bill is William Arthur, and Ginny is Ginevra Molly. Not sure how soon names can be reused as middle names.

[nx74defiant.livejournal.com]

So than we could have - James Harry and Lily Ginevra.

When I try to do my family tree it seems like reusing name use to be more common. There would be a large family like the Weaslys for example and you would see Bill having children - including an Arthur and a Molly in some form. Than Charlie have a large family - children including an Arthur and a Molly in some form. Than Ginny having a large family - including an Arthur and a Molly in some form and so on. Than they have different nicknames in the family they go by. It than gets to be the challenge of figuring out which of the similar names is which person.

[borg-princess.livejournal.com]

Hell, my family reuses names and doesn't even use them for middles - I'm one of four Annies in my generation (named for our grandmother). At least the other two are overseas, but one cousin lives locally and it was quite aggravating that the way family distinguished us was 'big Annie' and 'little Annie'. >_< As the older, I got to be 'big Annie'.

[oryx_leucoryx]

This really depends on the culture. Among Jews, Sephardi Jews prefer naming children after elderly living relatives, in hope that the child will live to be as old as the person they are being named after, so you get many cousins (from different branches of the family) named after the same elderly grandparent or great-grandparent.

OTOH Ashkenazic Jews avoid having living people with identical first names in the family (especially if they are in different generations) in order not to confuse the Angel of Death - the fear is that a child might die when it was time for the older relative to die.

(All these superstitions are a reminder that not-too-long ago people did not take it for granted their child would live to adulthood.)

[oryx_leucoryx]

Funny case from my family - one of my great uncles named his son after his father (the son's grandfather) and after the fact realized his father was still alive, so the naming was inappropriate. He unofficially changed the child's name, and until his last day he never used his son's legal name.

[mitchell bender (from livejournal.com)]

My family is culturally Ashkenazic and while I don't recall that justification being mentioned much, I'm pretty sure that's right.

It ended up manifesting as recycling of first initials, so when a child was born they'd be given names that shared first initials with recently-deceased family members (and ideally if the first name was after a paternal relative, the middle name would be after a maternal relative). So I ended up getting Mitchell Cole after Milton and Carl, a great-grandfather on either side.

Different families end up with different systems even within the same culture (I have cousins who don't follow the pattern perfectly, or who only had one of two names decided like this, etc).

I honestly don't blame Rowling for recycling familiar names, because I think it ends up easier on the reader (especially when the children are basically an afterthought in the main narrative), and it is something that happens in many actual families. But it does become a problem, and an indication of sexism, when all of the names chosen because they're meaningful to only one parent.

There are actually a few different patterns for names, even just amongst the Weasleys (Fred and George actually seem to follow the pattern my family used, in a way, sharing initials with Fabian and Gideon, though we don't know how early their uncles died or what their middle names were). But we did see Harry James, William Arthur and Ginevra Molly (all having the middle name of the matching-sex parent), Percy Ignatius (who was Ignatius?), Ronald Bilius (after an uncle)... do we actually know any other characters' middle names? This does seem to establish a pattern of "use the matching parent's name for the middle name of the firstborn child", which I think a lot of fans use to try to extrapolate names for other characters (how many people assume Draco's middle name has to be Lucius, or Hermione's mother must be named Jean/Jane, etc?) but there isn't any canonical support for that...

[hwyla.livejournal.com]

Just FYI - I'm pretty sure we do know that Fabian & Gideon were still alive when the Fred & George were born. I could be wrong, but IF I recall correctly, they are mentioned as part of the Order in the photo Moody was showing Harry. Even if not, one of their killers was mentioned at Karkaroff's hearing.

It seems they died during the last year of the war - so after Harry was born and so, obviously after the Twins were born.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Regarding the twins, we know Gideon and Fabian were still alive when they were born because they appear in the Order photo which was taken 2 weeks before the McKinnon's died, and that death was shortly before Harry's birthday at the end of July 1981. So Gideon and Fabian were alive as late as the middle of July 1981, by which time Ron was already 16 months old and Ginny was about to be born.

Ignatius Prewett appears on the Black Family Tree, he married Lucretia Black, Orion Black's sister, thus he was Sirius' uncle (by marriage). This is why Molly and Sirius are considered 'cousins by marriage'.

I think Charlie would have been named after Molly's father, but I am surprised nobody is named after Arthur's father (Septimus, according to comments on the Black Family Tree), they go directly to Molly's uncle. Maybe Molly dominated the naming in their family.

[kahran042]

For what it's worth, from what I've seen, Septimus is often Charlie's middle name in fanon, which also happens to be my headcanon

[oryx_leucoryx]

But that would mean Percy was named after Molly's uncle, skipping her father. Personally I think Charlie has Molly's father's name, and when Percy was born and Molly chose uncle Ignatius was when Arthur started really retreating into his shed with his hobbies.

Does anyone know on which side of the family Uncle Bilius was?

[vermouth1991.livejournal.com]

Percy Ignatius (who was Ignatius?)

The one "Ignatius" I can recall from canon is Ignatius Peverall, a.k.a. the Third Brother who asked for Death's invisibility cloak.

[jana-ch.livejournal.com]

The Peverell brother with the invisibility cloak was named Ignotus, which is Latin for “unknown,” not Ignatius, which means “fiery one.” I’m not sure why Percy is more fiery than the rest of the red-haired Weasleys, but “unknown” is certainly an appropriate name for a man who supposedly spent his entire life in hiding. Another appropriate name might be Ignavus, which means “coward.”

In fact, I think this is my new headcanon. The third brother in the story had been called Ignavus, because the original message of the tale was that living your life in hiding is a cowardly act, not a noble, philosophical one. A publisher belonging to the Potter family slipped a name-change into an edition of Beedle back in the 18th century that went on to become the most popular version of the book, and the headstone in Godric’s Hollow is a 19th century re-creation by Potter antiquary.