Hermione, names, twins

[rja.carnegie at excite.com]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "Amy Z" <aiz24 at h...> wrote:
> Re: the Weasleys' dinstinguished names:  Robert noted the prevalence of 
> royal names.  Virginia is a royal name also, no?  I assume the name predates 
> Elizabeth I, but the state Virginia was named for her, not, IIRC, for the 
> Virgin Mary (it was established, albeit abortively, by Walter Raleigh).

Well, maybe I should have checked.  www.babyname.com (which
I've been warned not to trust, of course, but never mind that)
says that "[Virginia] was first spelled Verginia, and was the
feminine form of an ancient Roman clan name, Verginius.
Over time its spelling changed due to its association with
the Latin term virgo, meaning ''maiden.'' This meaning has
driven the use of the name ever since.  In 1587, it was
the name given the first baby born to English colonists in
the New World, Virginia Dare.  Both the baby and her home
colony were named for Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen of
England" - abortively, as you say: no one knows what
happened to the colony.

Ronald was where I was stuck and struggling ;-)

> >I suppose that two sets of (identical?) twins, in different
> >years in the school, isn't statistically unusual.  Nevertheless,
> >I wonder if JKR has something special planned for all of them...
> 
> Comedy of Errors comes to Hogwarts?

Not _quite_ what I had in mind - although mistaken identity
and impersonation stories can be fun.  However, there's
Polyjuice Potion for that, if we want it.

I didn't have anything concrete in mind - only whether
there were two sets of twins available just by "chance",
or whether JKR wanted to have them available later on
for some reason, morbid or otherwise.  The concensus
seems to be for reasonable chance.

Robert Carnegie
Meretricious!