Wizard's Names

[grey_wolf_c]

No: HPFGUIDX 34570

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., christine m breen <kokobreen at j...> wrote:
I remember hearing it or reading that what you can identify, you can 
control.  Such as your fears--identify them and you can start to 
control them.  Identify your weaknesses--you cannot change them until 
you identify them.  Also from reading many sci-fi books--in those books 
if you knew the name of the demon you could control it.  So perhaps 
Dumbledore wanting Voldemort's name used was so Harry would gain 
control of his fear of Voldemort and ulitimately gain control of 
Voldemort (i.e. defeat him).
Christine
----------------

This leads to an interesting point: in many fantasy worlds, the "power 
of the true name" (or suitable variances as age, zodiacal sign, etc.) 
is the most powerfull ascendant over a wizard (to the point of adopting 
aliases or even changing names to protect themselves). This does not 
seem to be the case in Potterverse, except in Voldie's case (which is 
probably just a way of facing the terror the name implies), but it does 
give you an insight: when casting particularly difficult spells, do you 
need to know the name of the objective? I'd say no, since AK is pretty 
short (and you don't get more powerful than that), but then again when 
Harry casts accio in the second challenge in GoF, he uses his broom's 
name. Any ideas?

Grey Wolf