Voldemort = Flight of Death?

Cafe Society
1

Can anyone tell me how Tom Riddle decided on his alias?

I know that in one of the books he showed that “I am Lord Voldemort” was an anagram for Tom Marvolo Riddle.
BUT
It is not a real anagram without I and am
AND
Why did the Mudbloodophobic evil dark one use his hated father’s Muggle name as part of his near anagrammatical alias?

So, is it a prophecy? Are he and Harry going to have a flying turbo-charged broomstick joust to the death at the end of the final book?

Have any Dopers here read any of the books in French?
If so, what is the name of the baddie, is he caled Lord Voldemort (in French) or is he called Lord Flightofdeath (in English)?
(I concede that it would be very hard for a francophone to say, but you never know!!)

And while I’m here:
Do all the punny names in the books translate easily to other languages?

2

‘Voldemort’ can also mean (kind of) ‘theft of death’ which is correct if you think of old Voldy cheating death the first time round, and (Order of Phoenix spoilers)

Makes the prophecy all the more harder on Harry – how exactly is he going to kill someone who keeps on cheating death?

Malfoy translates roughly as ‘bad’ or ‘evil faith’, while Fleur Delacour means ‘Flower of the court’.

3

Delacour would be better translated as ‘flower of the heart’, though I know it’s really spelled coeur.

4

Yes, ‘coeur’ is spelt ‘coeur’, and ‘cour’ means ‘court’, hence my translation. I can’t find the cite, but I think Rowling said somewhere that she meant ‘cour’, not ‘coeur’.

So a citeless nyah to you.:wink:

5

So what’s Mundungus Fletcher mean in English? :wink:

6

My personal theory on the anagram: He was already being called Voldemort at school, so he probably came up with the name when he was fifteen or so. And playing with anagrams of your name to come up with something that sounds like a cool bad guy name is rather popular among geeky fifteen year old boys. Hence “I am Lord Voldemort.”

7

A fletcher makes arrows and Mundungus is generally all of a quiver in case Molly catches him in some of his dodgy dealings.

:smiley:

Unless, of course, JK Rowling is a Doper and a Mundungus is a breed of goat.

She subtly changed the phonetics of felching to throw us off the trail, but we have sussed out her cunning plan.

8

Personally, I find the school names rather entertaining. IIRC, “Beauxbatons” means “beautiful wands”, and I’m guessing “Durmstrang” is a play on “Sturm [und] Drang”, or “storm and stress”. As for “Hogwarts”, I can’t decide whether it’s a straight reversal of “warthogs” or just a funny-sounding name.

9

In the webcast interview with Rowling she says “Mundungus” is an olde fashiondy word for tobacco.

10

OED backs her up on that - it’s an obsolete word for “offal” and for tobacco of very poor quality.

11

a lot of the names are from Latin, like the spells, or from various kinds of mythology, so they don’t need to be changed to reflect a translation - there’s a thread on this board that’s all about the names in the harry potter series

12

I always took the “Vol” part of his name as a derivative from the Latin “uolo.” Thus, “Death wish.”