DH actors

[Carol]

Carol earlier:
> > Obviously, -vitch is not a German ending (it's Russian, right?) but I was thinking of the village that JKR describes and the woman who says "I know not!" and then says something in German. So maybe he's a Russian or Slavic wandmaker who ended up in Germany?
> 
> Miles:
> My spontanous thought when reading this for the first time was "oh, he is living in Transylvania". I must admit that this firsth thought was not really logical, but could be the right direction:
> 
> The name Gregorovich comes from a slavic language, so assuming Gregorovich is a Russian, Pole, Bulgarian or whatever, he could live in his home country and still in a village with German speaking people - there are still remains of the German colonies that once were spread all over Eastern Europe and Eastern Central-Europe - for example in Transylvania.
> 
> But, and this was my fault, Romania is not a Slavic country - the name of the country is the origin of its language. The people in Transylvania would speak Romanian, Hungarian or German - but the name Gregorovich wouldn't fit into the language landscape, so to say.
> 
> But it could be much more simple: Gregorovich could easily be an Austrian, a Swiss or German wizard, with immigrated ancestors. I just checked my local phonebook (in a city with 270,000 inhabitants in Germany) and found a Gregorowicz ;).
> 
> Miles, noting that first thoughts usually only become good thoughts when thought out.
>
Carol responds:

Are you by any chance using the British edition, and, if so, does it use the spelling "Gregorovich"? I just checked to make sure that I wasn't making an mistake: the American edition definitely uses the spelling "Gregorovitch."

Originally, back in GoF, I assumed that his nationality was the same as Krum's (Romanian or Bulgarian, I forget) because he was Krum's wandmaker, or that he was Russian based on the name and the apparent location of Durmstrang. Then, like you, I thought of Gregorowicz, which would be Polish, but I was thrown off course by the obviously Alpine village with German-speaking inhabitants. (Gregorovitch's English isn't very good, either, but I can't recognize a specific accent or speaking style that might give away his nationality and we don't hear him speaking any language except English.)

I checked a site with etymologies for surnames and didn't find Gregorovitch in any form, but I did find Grigorescu, which means
"son of Grigore" in Romanian and Grigorov, which means "son of Grigor" in Bulgarian. Zanooda can tell us whether "Gregorovitch" has the same meaning in Russian.

As for why he would be living in a German-speaking country, I have no idea. He could be in retirement (maybe Krum bought one of his last wands?) or he could, as you say, be an immigrant or the son of immigrants. I could be wrong, but Dolohov and Karkaroff seem to be former Hogwarts students despite their names, as the Lestranges and Malfoys (whose ancestors are presumably from France) definitely are.

Anyway, I was thrown off by the Alpine village and the German-speaking mother, whose only "crime" was to live in Gregorovitch's old house. Come to think of it, that lets out the retirement theory. He must have lived in a German-speaking country *before* he moved to his current house, which may or may not be in the same country.

Carol, now going with the immigrant theory as the only one that makes sense