Rowling mentions it on her website.
There is nothing in the books about Cho Chang being Scottish, British, Welsh, or Northern Irish. What would fit British school / Chinese ancestry best is, of course - Hong Kong!
Edited to Add: Hong Kong?!? Now there’s an insulting stereotypical name! 
You and me both! Are you ready to start the letter-writing campaign to Warner Bros? Maybe it’s not too late to reshoot some scenes!
Does anyone else thing Kingsley Shacklebolt is just the most awesome name? I’m rereading Order of the Phoenix, and I just love reading his name every time it comes up.
I’m with Queen Bruin-I always pictured him looking like Samuel L. Jackson. Too bad Rowling only casts British actors and the like-I think he would have been perfect.
Straight from the horse’s mouth, Rowling said that she considers the actress cast as Luna to be “perfect”.
I also think that the illustrations in the books show Luna to be rather cute-just somewhat unkept and quirky.
So far, I think the casting has been perfect-as for Watson, surely wardrobe and make-up could have done something. I would have liked to have seen Ian McKellen play Dumbledore, but I can understand why he didn’t want to.
And I find Thewlis rather sexy. Don’t hurt me! :o
As for insulting names, what about this?
Bah. Cornelius Fudge is always described as wearing a “lime-green bowler” and in the pic Robert Hardy is wearing some sort of forest-green fedora. Bah, I say.
I’m re-reading the series to catch up and #1-3 I picked up in paperback from a trip to Canada in 2005, the Raincoast label with the British text. My #4-6, though, are American, with sneakers and sweaters and lemon drops and Merry Christmas and periods after all the Misters.
The only guy creepier than David Thewlis might have been Mackenzie Crook, but he’s in another franchise. I agree Chiwetel would have been a wonderful Kingsley, and he’s a Brit of Nigerian heritage, born in London. I don’t know why Kingsley is dressed like an Afro-wizard, although actually he could wear a dashiki-like wizard robe amongst the Muggles and nobody would notice.
No hurting going on here. Thewlis is dead sexy to me, and to many others out in fandom, although of course he’s not to everyone’s taste. I think he’s absolutely lovely as Lupin; he’s warm but dryly self-deprecating, reserved but not aloof, intelligent but not stuffy, shabby but not seedy, tortured but not a drama queen, kind but never quite safe. Generally, his performance gives off that odd “someone who really tries to seem normal, but can’t fade into the background” dichotemy that Lupin needs. Also (shallow alert!), Thewlis has the most beautiful hands in the biz.
(And by the way, the only thing I’d seen him in previously was his performance as pedophilic pimp on Prime Suspect 3, so it’s not as if I was expecting to find Thewlis so charming. Prior to that, if you’d mentioned Thewlis I would have said: “oh yeah, the child-pimping druggie from PS3, right? Ew.”)
It’s the performance that was my gateway drug into the Potterverse, so I make no apologies of being a huge fangirl. 
TONKS! TONKS! TONKS!
(at least she’s of age)
kellner writes:
> Rowling mentions it on her website.
I don’t believe her explanation. If it were true that the British editor was cutting passages all through that chapter, there should be other places in it where there is a difference between the American and the British editions that consist of just a shorter length in the British edition. There are no such passages in that chapter or even in that book. Indeed, there are only a couple brief examples of shortening for length in either the British or the American editions of the later books. Here’s a complete guide to the differences between the British and the American editions:
(Go down towards the end of the webpage and click on each book separately.)
Every single difference between the British and American editions (except for a few that I’ll mention shortly) are either obvious changes to use American terms instead of British ones or slightly different editorial decisions about how to show handwriting in the books. There are a few cases in the later books (not in the first one) where there’s a sentence missing in one edition which was kept in the other, but it goes both ways, with sometimes the longer passage being in the British edition and sometimes in the American edition. There certainly is no evidence that the British editor was cutting passages all through that chapter which the American editor kept.
I suspect that Rowling’s memory is faulty about this. I suspect that something like this happened: She submitted the book to the British editor. At that point, Rowling hadn’t even thought about an American edition (since this was the first book), so no American editor was even looking at it yet. The British editor cut a number of short passages from the book, particularly in that chapter, including the part about Dean Thomas. The British edition was then prepared for publication. Meantime, the British editor sent the edited manuscript to American publishers. Scholastic accepted it. The American editor at Scholastic used the version of the manuscript that the British editor had already edited, not the original manuscript written by Rowling, to work from.
The American editor then made the changes in the book that were just Americanizing the British terms (well, and changing the title of the boo). The American editor showed these changes to Rowling and told her, “Gee, you have characters in the books who are South Asian and East Asian. I’m surprised that you didn’t put in any who are Afro-Caribbean.” Rowling said, “But some of them are. Dean Thomas is, for instance.” The American editor said, “But his name is English, while the Asian characters don’t have English names. How is any reader supposed to know that he’s black?” Rowling said, “Well, of course his name is English. In general, Afro-Caribbeans have English names.” The editor said, “Well, then, the American readers are going to assume that he’s of English ancestry.” Rowling said, “Well, why don’t you put back in a passage that my British editor cut out where it’s mentioned that Dean is black?” The editor said, “O.K., that will work.” And that’s why there’s a difference.
Wait a minnit here - the American editions of Harry Potter are all Amercianized? Two questions - doesn’t that lose a lot of the charm and mood of the books, and can Americans not read a British book and figure stuff out?
I don’t think they’re entirely Americanized. I know I’ve seen jumpers for sweaters and snogging for kissing and a few others. I’m not sure if they change football to soccer.
By the way, unless British publishing is different than American publishing, I doubt the editor made serious material changes to the book that weren’t directly approved by Rowling. Unless her publishing contract just blew chunks, any significant changes would require her okay first.
featherlou writes:
> Wait a minnit here - the American editions of Harry Potter are all Amercianized?
> Two questions - doesn’t that lose a lot of the charm and mood of the books,
> and can Americans not read a British book and figure stuff out?
Weren’t you aware of this? Yes, there are a number of places in each of the books where a British slang term or turn of phrase was replaced with one that was more comprehensible to an American. Note, though, that this does not mean that American slang terms were introduced into the books. The replacement words or phrases make the books more bland, in some sense, because they replace some British slang terms with words or phrases that are less localized, but nothing that’s specifically American slang was introduced. Please, go ahead and click on the link that I gave and then on each of the titles. This will give you a complete list of the changes.
Whether Americans wanted to read the original version of the book was mostly irrelevant to the editor who made the decision. The American editor (and perhaps higher-ups at Scholastic) were the only ones consulted when the changes were made. Remember, the changes made in the first book were done before the book was published in the U.S., possibly before it was even published in the U.K. At that point it was just another children’s book that might do well and might not even make back its investment. The American editors decided on their own initiative that it should have some British terms replaced with ones more typical to Americans. Whether American readers wanted this is hard to say. It’s quite possible that if you did a survey of the readers of the Harry Potter books that they might say that they would prefer to read the British version.
I personally would have much preferred to read the original versions. I think the American editors here are reinforcing the prejudice many people have that Americans are insular and dumb. They could have put in footnotes for the English terms instead of changing them. The most egregious change was to have the book title “Philosopher’s stone” modified to “Socerer’s stone.”
Of course, there are some remaining British terms that I, as an adult, was puzzled by at the first read e.g. “taking the mickey”: does that mean insulting, or making fun of? I believe the latter.
I’ve read in an interview of J.K. Rowling that, although accepting that many changes suggested by the editors made the books better, there are some changes (especially the title change of the first book by the US editor) that she probably would have fought harder against had she felt more confident. I imagine that many first-time authors will not push as hard against the editor’s wishes, and that they get more assertive once they become popular and have more bargaining power.
Titles are a different beast altogether. Many books get title changes, and the author usually has very little to say about it.
That’s what the agent is for. Cause many of us would sell our books for five bucks and a Snickers bar if it meant being published. (I have no idea if Rowling had an agent for the sale of her first book.)
The latter by means of the former. Ribbing, joshing.
That’s why I’m getting book 7 (and have gotten copies of all the other books so far) from Amazon.co.uk. Of course, I’m paying as much in shipping as I am for the book itself, but it’s worth it because it allows me to keep my feeling of superiority while still reading a children’s book.
My sister orders the UK versions as well. A friend of hers recommended them as better, and she seems to agree.
Hey, eels need to be fought. They can be quite dangerous sometimes. ([size]yes, I know it’s more like ‘nil’; at least it’s not like, well, the other possibility[/size])
I thought I made it fairly clear that I was surprised by this knowledge.
featherlou writes:
> I thought I made it fairly clear that I was surprised by this knowledge.
I apologize if that came across as a nasty comment. I was surprised because you’re not new here and everytime there’s a Harry Potter thread on the SDMV it eventually turns into complaining about the changes in the American editions of the books. I was just bothered because I knew the thread would end up being about the changes.