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

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

--- <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-OTChatter/message/39159>, "Carol" <justcarol67 at ...> wrote:

<< The name is Greek and derived from Hermes (with whom our Hermione has no connection that I can see). >>

Hermes is the god of cleverness. He's a real good talker, speaking rather more persuasively and seductively than our Hermione does in canon; I hope, for the sake of House Elf protection, she learned some of his rhetorical skills early in her career in politics or as a barrister! He also is the source of information, both true and false: traveller, messenger, gossip, journalist, liar, and so on. Hermione is a source of information, conveying it from all those books. 

Fans of alchemical interpretations liked to point out that not only is Hermes called Mercury in Latin, but the chemical abbreviation for mercury is Hg, the initials of Hermione Granger. There is a lot of material here which, if not designed by the author, has a lot of wonderful co-incidences to play with.