Sometimes things just have to smack me upside the head.......

[Carol]

Geoff wrote:
><snip>
> I did mention Hermione Gingold as another "owner' of the name way, way back... marvellous actress.
>
Carol adds:
But JKR actually got the name from the character Hermione in Shakespeare's "A Winter's Tale":

http://www.hp-lexicon.org/wizards/granger.html

That Hermione is a queen falsely accused of infidelity. Here's her monologue, if anyone's interested:

http://www.monologuearchive.com/s/shakespeare_017.html

The name is Greek and derived from Hermes (with whom our Hermione has no connection that I can see). There's also a Hermione in Greek mythology. the daughter of Menelaus and Helen, about whom I know absolutely nothing.

Muggles, of course, have their own family traditions for naming their children. JKR comments in an interview that "my Hermione bears very little relation to [Shakespeare's] Hermione, but it just seemed the sort of name that a pair of professional dentists, who liked to prove how clever they were ... do you know what I mean ... gave their daughter a nice, unusual name that no-one could pronounce!" the link to the actual interview is broken, but Accio Quotes paraphrases JKR as stating that "Hermione needed an unusual name because she was so swotty and annoying." Here's my source:

http://www.accio-quote.org/themes/hermione.htm 

Carol, wondering whether Hermione would have evolved differently into a character if JKR had named her Jane, as (IIRC) she originally intended