Typo in the Credits!

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Amanda Geist" <editor at t...>
wrote:
> This is what being a LOON gets you.
> 
> In the cast list--the "cast in order of appearance" list that has 
> everyone, they misspelled Parvati's last name. It said "Patel," not 
> "Patil." Unless their name was "Patel" in the UK, I think this is a 
> fairly egregious typo on their part.

This afternoon, before Y!Groups went down for a couple of hours,
Y!Groups's Search worked much better than on several previous days,
letting me find the following posts about Patel and Patil:

Anita Sathe's http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforG
rownups/message/58335
My http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/58614 
Megalynn44's http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/52872
Anne Urban's http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGr
ownups/message/52960 
My http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/29661
Madhuri567's http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/29663
which I am going to string altogether regardless of who said what.

<< India is a land of so many cultural and ethnic diversities, it is
actually overwhelming. A terrific amount of different communities
reside in this country, one of which is the Gujrathi community, from
the state of Gujrath. A popular last name found in this community is
'Patel'. These people are primarily businessmen by profession and very
good ones too. They also form a large part of the country's immigrants
and it's become quite common to find them in the US and UK. I won't be
surprised if any of you know more than one Patel. So if JKR had chosen
the twins to be 'Patel' s and not Patils I wouldn't be surprised.

Now, Patil is a surname found commonly in the 'Marathi' community,
from the state of Maharashtra, that's where I come from, many of my
friends are Patils! It's interesting to note that Patils have belonged
to one of old families esp. in rural India. They are administrative
heads of villages and quite powerful and influential people, though
only the rural Patils. So they'd be the Weasley/Malfoy equivalent in
Muggle-India. >>

I hesitate to disagree with someone who lives in the relevant place,
but I was under the impression that here in USA, Patel and Patil are
interchangeable spellings of the same name. Last year I heard a news
story about 90% of motels and small hotels in USA are owned by
Gujrathi immigrants named Patil and Patel.

<< Because of this, I wonder if the Patil sisters too come from an old
wizarding family and may play a larger role in the future. I mean, of
all the Indian last names - wonder why she picked Patil? >>

I kind of assumed that JKR just picked a South Asian surname that
she'd encountered from someone she'd met, and then picked Indian
first names that alliterated with it. Some listie was arguing that
many people named Patil or Patel are Muslims, and I said Muslims
wouldn't name their daughter after a Hindu goddess, and the other
person said JKR might not even know that those names are Hindu, only
that they're names of people she's met from India.

-- For all we know, the twins could have a Hindu mother and a Muslim
father. But Patil and Patel are common Hindu names as well,
especially in the north-eastern and north-western parts of India
where there is a higher concentration of Muslims. --

++ Patil is a very common east Indian surname -- perhaps not as common
as Gandhi, but very common nonetheless. (I've heard that Patil (or
Patel) and Gandhi are essentially the "Johnson" and "Smith" of east
Indian surnames.) ++

== So, today I am in my Asian Art History class, when I get a handout 
about Hinduism. (snip) Parvati is a deity herself, and the wife or
consort of the deity Shiva. Since it's an art history class the
teacher talked more about the art than the details of these Hindu
figures. ==

I suspect that the [Patil girls'] names don't come from any knowledge
of Hinduism that JKR might have, because Parvati is a Shaivaya name
and I believe that Padma is a Vishnava name (I hope I got those words
right: worshippers of Shiva and worshippers of Vishnu). 

I think of Padma as a Vishnaiva name, because as Vishnu sleeps on the
coils of the cosmic serpent (is that his vehicle?) with his feet
resting in the lap of his wife Lakshmi goddesss of wealth and beauty
(he is the Preserver, she is goddess of some things that people are
eager to preserve), there is a Lotus growing out of his navel. That
Lotus, sometimes personified as a goddess Padma, is the entire
physical world, the illusory material world that we experience,
also called Maya ('illusion', a related word to 'magic') and Lila
('play'). So sometimes it is said that Padma, Maya, and Lila are
junior wives of Vishnu and sometimes that they are additional aspects
of Lakshmi.

-- The Vaishnavite and Shaivaite distinctions aren't really that big a
deal nowadays. Many Vaishnavite parents give Shaivate names to their
children, and vice-versa. --