Hopefully, at Christmas and immediately post-Christmas, a certain amount of only-marginally-on-topic silliness, may be tolerated. I got for Christmas, a quite splendid book entitled "Isms and Ologies" – cataloguing some of the many and varied perceived versions of the truth, which humans have come up with. It includes one, which I feel I just have to try and share with TLC, by reason of its name. Would suspect that JKR derived – at least in part -- her word for non-magical people, from the name of this British highly-fringe religious movement – it has a good sound, plus overtones of coming across as rather daft – which chimes in with the way in which wizards tend, reprehensibly, to regard "the other lot".

I quote ( heavily "snipping" the weirder and more discursive bits):

MUGGLETONIANISM: An obscure but surprisingly long-lasting English sect founded during the English civil wars by two cousins, John Reeve (1608 – 58) and Lodowick Muggleton (1609 – 98), who preached about the imminent apocalypse, declaring themselves the two witnesses in the Book of Revelation (11: 3 – 6) … [ they both wrote various books concerning their ideas]… Both of them spent time in prison for blasphemy.

[ Muggleton was opposed to the Quakers, and wrote treatises against them.] By the 1670s Muggleton had endured several struggles over control of the sect and his message had changed radically. Now a quasi-Deist, he argued that since God no longer intervened in the world, prayer was useless (his followers met in taverns for Bible readings and hymn singing). He also denied the Trinity and the immortality of the soul. He understood Hell to be the state of unredeemed man; through reason and faith, he believed, heaven could be established on earth.

The last Muggletonian, Philip Noakes, of Kent, died in 1979.

Oh, no! JK Rowling would never have breached the boundaries of criticism or cynicism in complete inuendo, obvious from this format - would she?? Hmmm. Now I'm not sure. (And my kids are arguing over who gets to play with what; and I can't hear what I'm thinking.) Personally, my take is that the word "muggle" (or mugglionus) is derived from the warm (fireplace, disconnected from floo), cushy (V. Dursley and son), blanketed (snow?), mug (butterbeer) condition of security (tighter that Gringotts) called "snuggle". But I could be wrong.


MUST EDIT AS SHOW OF RESPECT: Brymorg, this is a suspiciously accurate source for the term "muggle." Right now I just don't have the energy to put a great deal of analysis to it. Very interesting. ELC

Hey, who knows exactly where JK gets her ideas on what to call things, from? (Your guess as good as mine!) I remember seeing her quoted as saying that "Quidditch" came to her from absolutely nowhere, while she was travelling on a plane...

Am just delighting in this wondrous book which I got as a present from my brother and his family -- they didn't realise the misery they were unleashing on the world, giving me this opportunity to bore everyone I know for months to come, with extracts from this work... at least people on TLC are fairly safe: if I get truly off-topic, the moderators are liable to boot the offending posts off the site!

Post along! And thank your brother's family for me.

Word associations are less erroneous than one might think. And if JKR came up with Quidditch, what else did she come up with on a train, plane, boat, or auto? I bet it was then that her "creative genius" burned the brightest - kept the furnaces hot for 7+ books (Fantastic Beasts, Quidditch Through the Ages, Tales of Beedle, Encyclopedia, and who knows what else?). She couldn't have come up with all of this sitting in a cafe, or locked in a hotel. By the way, did she get in trouble for writing on the bust in the hotel room?

Will do! Writing on the bust in the hotel room? If I've read of this one, I've forgotten it. Could you kindly remind / enlighten?

Sure, Brymorg. It is taken from the TIME interview (Person of the Year, Runner Up), by Nancy Gibbs:

"It was the end of a long January day when the last page of the last chapter was complete. Rowling had finished putting on the page numbers and found herself alone in her suite at the Balmoral feeling, she recalls, some "end-of-epic euphoria." So she danced around the room a bit and then in a fit of creative destruction took out her pen and wrote on the base of the bust of Hermes that stood in the window alcove, "'J.K. Rowling finished writing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in this room (552) on 11th Jan 2007.'"

So what do you think? Did she get in trouble?


OK, another -ism of sorts: Neville's Remembrall. How did Jo come up with a "thing" that let's you know you've forgotten something? Why is it capitalized? And why doesn't the thing tell you what it is that you forgot??


Edit because I forgot to add Remembrall, and I don't have one. (Sorry)

maybe she came up with Remembrall, by adding the word "remember" and "ball" because it sounds the same, kinda

I always thought it was "Remember" and "all". You know, like, remember all. ;]

When I first read SS/PS, I immediately thought that these names don't just come out of nowhere. Ok, with Quidditch we know, but other names are clearly not random. In fact, there are occasions where the names show certain things about the characters and the places. This is what I came up with after a bit of research and guessing, feel free to make any comments and corrections

Hogwarts: separate the word in two: hog and wart, put them together in different order and you get the word warthog, a wild boar that lives in Africa (remember Pumba from The Lion King?)

Gryffindor: name that comes from a mythological Greek creature, the griffin, or griffon or gryphon, which had a lion’s body and an eagle’s wings and head.

Slytherin: comes from the verb slither, which means to move close to the ground in the way snakes do.

Ravenclaw: the raven is a large bird of the crow family with shiny black feathers and the claws are the sharp nails of flesh-eating animals

Hufflepuff: the expression huff and puff (huffle and puffle in older English) means to breathe in a noisy way because you are tired (this house is famous for being hardworking)

Dumbledore: his name means bumble bee in older English

Peeves: from the expression sb’s pet peeve meaning something that you particularly dislike

Muggle: related to the word muggins, which means sb who feels stupid because they have let themselves be treated unfairly (muggles aren’t exactly clever in comparison to wizards, or so wizards think)

Voldemort: vol de mort in French means escape from death

Malfoy: mal in French means bad and the second part of the word comes from the word foe, which means enemy

Crabbe: obviously misspelled, this is the word crab

Goyle: a gargoyle is an ugly figure of a person or an animal that is made of stone and through which water is carried away from the roof of a building, especially a church (it is clear that Goyle isn’t good-looking)

Mirror of Erised: the proper name is Mirror of Desire (that’s what Erised is if you read it backwards). There’s an inscription carved around the top: Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi. If you read it backwards it says: I show not your face but your heart’s desire.

Parseltongue: this means snake language in book 2. The verb parse means to divide a sentence into parts and describe the grammar of each part. In other words, the writer of the books says that language is important!

Dementor: a person that has a mental illness can be called demented, esp. in old-fashioned English. So, a dementor (book 3) is something that drives you crazy.

Dobby: when you dob your friends in to someone, you go and say that they have done something wrong (Dobby betrays his master’s plans to Harry, something that a loyal servant is never supposed to do)

Back to muggle for a moment. I recall after the first few books became popular that some lady who wrote a childrens book claimed to have used the term muggle first, and even had characters named James and Lilly. She tried to sue JKR, but I think they either settled or her lawyers convinced her she did not have a case, either way it fell into obscurity. I do recall that in James and the Giant Peach, the hero was named James Henry Trotter, and JKR said she was a fan of Roald Dahl.

Thanks. I'd be willing to bet that the hotel treasure their bust with her addition to it -- and if ever afflicted with cash problems, could sell it for a large sum.
One of those odd things: if it's uncouth and illiterate scrawls by "young people behaving badly", it's graffiti, and generally deplored; if it was done a very long time ago, or done by someone famous, it's an item of value.
"Remembrall" -- I'm with MrsHalfBloodPrince on this one -- "remember all" -- device which supposedly gives you the power to remember everything (a boast on the part of the [magical] manufacturer, I'd suspect, rather than strict truth).

I vaguely remember hearing about that. Would be inclined to think that the woman concerned,was either delusional, or lying in the hope of making a lot of money via litigation; but then, I'm biased...

Of course the easy one regarding Neville Longbottom, and Tolkien's Longbottom Leaf. But how about these:

Hagrid's brother Grawp? Is that Old English? It doesn't sound like a Romance Language. And what's a Dobby? Floo powder/network (that's a really neat one). Thestrals? Nargles? Is McGonagall a real name? How did JK Rowling come up with The Burrow? R. J. Lupin (Take off on J.(K)R.?)? What about Wizard Chess? These and many others.

One of the list -- McGonagall is definitely a real name. The most famous (notorious?) person to bear it -- I've read that JK has a certain fondness for him, and it was him from whom she borrowed Minerva's surname -- was William McGonagall of Dundee (fl. late 19th century): the author of probably the most hilariously hackneyed and downright awful poetry ever published in the English language. The biggest laugh afforded, is that William was deadly-serious about his verse: he thought he was the new Byron or Wordsworth.
His best-known offering is probably his poem on a tragic happening in 1879, when the new (very badly built) railway bridge over the River Tay estuary at Dundee collapsed while a train was passing over it, with considerable loss of life. W. McG.'s elegy on this event begins:

"Beautiful ralway bridge of the silvery Tay!
I am feeling very sad today..."

...and on and on...

I would like to know what happened to her, too. From what I recall from that woman's internet site, the story has nothing to do with Harry Potter, it was all a coincidence she took as copyright infringement. For example, her muggles are some sort of bald baby-like magical creatures. I think that after reading that, you will agree with me when I say that the only thing both stories share are the words muggle, Lily and Harry.

Well, Voldemort literally means fly from death, but the general idea is still there.
And I also noticed on the credits for one of the films, research was undertaken by people who actually study snake language!
I also love it how JKR personified her experiences with depression, and morphed her feelings into the Dementors. It's such a simple, but clever thing to do.

(Sorry I cut your quote down, Rosetart - I just wanted to remark on those 3 points)

Definitely concur -- I don't think our nice lady would ever have had anything to worry about over this one...