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J.K. Rowling
Chapter Two - Page 4Naming Lord Voldemort
Rowling drew on her knowledge of foreign languages to create distinctive names for other characters. For example, she conjured up the name of Lord Voldemort, the evil wizard who killed Harry Potter’s parents, by combining two French words, volonté and mort.” The meanings of the two French words emphasize traits of the villain: Volonté means “will” and mort means “death.” In keeping with his name, Voldemort often seeks to impose his will on others, and he does not hesitate to kill those who oppose him.
Rowling’s knowledge of Latin and Greek also seeped into her work. Critic Maureen Dowd observes,
Rowling borrowed the name of one her most important characters, Hermione Granger, from the works of the English poet and playwright William Shakespeare. “The first play I saw was at Stratford upon Avon,” Rowling recalls. “We saw Shakespeare’s King Lear. I was absolutely electrified by it. We also saw The Winter’s Tale and that was where I found the name Hermione—although of course it didn’t come in handy until years later.”Rowling, who studied classics at the University of Exeter, chose names with a Latin ring: “Lord Voldemort, Draco and Narcissa Malfoy, Albus Dumbledore, Nimbus 2000, Sibyll Trelawney. She came up with a Latin motto for the Hogwarts School: Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus (Never Tickle a Sleeping Dragon). And she alludes to Cerberus and Orpheus with Fluffy, the three-headed, music-loving dog that guards the sorcerer's stone, and to Proteus with her shape-shifting animagus.
Not only did Rowling find names for her characters, but she also created detailed backgrounds for everyone, whether or not she would use the material in the book. “I almost always have complete histories for my characters,” she later told an interviewer. “Sirius Black is a good example. I have a whole childhood worked out for him. The readers don’t need to know that but I do. I need to know more than them because I’m the one moving the characters across the page.”
Rowling modeled some characters after people she knew. To create Harry Potter’s close friend, Ron Weasley, Rowling borrowed traits from her school chum, Seán Harris. “Ron Weasley isn’t a living portrait of Seán, but he really is very Seán-ish,” Rowling says. Like Weasley, Harris always proved to be a loyal friend.
Rowling reached even further back in her life for a model for Professor Snape, the Potion Master who picks on Harry Potter in class. Recalling her menacing primary school teacher, Mrs. Morgan, Rowling told an interviewer, “There are a number of people who influenced the character of Snape in my books, and that teacher was definitely one of them.”
Copyright © 2008 by Bradley Steffens
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