Black family names (Was: Sometimes things just have to smack me ...)

[Carol]

Catlady:
> When you say 'started with Sirius', do you mean, she named him after the Dog Star right away, and years later named his other two first cousins Andromeda and Bellatrix? Named his mother Walburga before she named his father Orion? 

Carol responds:
Yes. I meant that she may have thought of Sirius Black as a character, including the idea of a black dog as an Animagus (black for Black and dog because of Sirius)--or, for that matter, she could have thought of the dog Animagus first and tried to come up with a suitable name for him, just as she must have realized that Remus Lupin was a werewolf and then come up with a suitable name for him. 

(I'm just guessing, of course. I don't have any source for all this.) Having named him Sirius, she may have decided that his brother and father should have astronomical names as well. Walburga, OTOH, has (as you point out) a DE-related name (Knights of Walpurgis/Walpurgis Night, a JKR-style pun). Possibly, and again, I'm just speculating, she may not have originally intended for Walburga and Orion to be cousins, so the astronomical tradition would be in Sirius's father's line, not his mother's. When she thought of Sirius's cousin Bellatrix, she probably decided to continue the tradition with her and the other Black sister, Andromeda. If my view of these characters is correct, the Black Family Tree would be a fairly late development. She didn't need it until OoP, after all.   

Catlady:

<snip> I don't know if Lycoris is supposed to be male or female or astronomical.

Carol responds:

I don't read ancient Greek (wish I did), but all the Greek names ending in -is that I'm familiar with (e.g., Iris, Doris, Alexis) are feminine. (The -is suffix may be a case ending.) I Googled "Lycoris," which I think is a lovely name. The Lexicon says it's the name of a group of plants in the lily family(!), but another source says that it means "twilight," which I like much better. (Maybe those plants bloom at twilight?)

http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Lycoris_Black

Carol, just speculating for the fun of it