Name meanings: Arabella Figg

[GulPlum]

No: HPFGUIDX 44097

At 06:41 17/09/02 -0400, eloise wrote:
>Eloise, hearing a commotion from the classroom she is passing, finds Richard
>(whose nerves I am becoming quite concerned about) bouncing a ferret on the
>floor. Brandishing her wand and transforming the ferret back into an
>indignant Richelle, she demands an explanation:  [That's it. I'm not really
>TBAYing, I just couldn't resist the image!]

Oh gawd. Was my outburst really so strong that it brought that image to you?
I'm good to animals, me. I'd never bounce a ferret around the room!  (I do, 
however, have a bean-bag mouse on my desk for that purpose...) :-)

 >Sorry, Richard. I'm confused. I've read the above passage several times,
>mindful of the last time I jumped in on a thread only to find I'd misread a
>sentence (I think it was Richelle's as it happens).
>
>The accusative case indicates that the noun in question is the *direct
>object* of a verb. It is the *genitive* case which indicates possession.
>In the case of bellum which, if memory serves, is second declension neuter,
>the genitive plural ("wars' ") would be bellorum, wouldn't it?

Correct.

>'Bella' could be either nominative, vocative or accusative plural. But not
>genitive. If it is accusative, we cannot translate it with an apostrophe...
>Can we?

I'm in no fit state to quote grammatical rules (after two hours' sleep last 
night, I'm desperately dragging up stuff I learned over 20 years ago!), but 
I *did* say that the formulation was completely meaningless. :-) However, 
semantically there is a connection between the accusative and genitive 
cases, and non-fluent users of inflected languages often confuse the two 
when translating. The accusative is very "strong" semantically and can be 
used for literary effect. I was attempting to drag *some* kind of meaning 
from Richelle's musings, and a fake-genitive was the only way the spirit of 
Latin would have gone. Her translation required "bella" to be dative (?), a 
jump which is quite simply outside the realms of possibility.

<snip Eloise's Latin lesson, far more complete than mine!>

>Be fair to Richelle. She does realise that her etymologies are considered
>fanciful by Latinists (you do, don't you?) - hence banging her head on her
>desk.

Yes, I'm aware she accepts they might be fanciful. I'm trying to explain 
why this one simply doesn't hold water; the worst thing about this one (and 
Richelle's far from the only person to propose it) is that it holds a grain 
of plausibility, except in a different direction.

 >In RL, names frequently change forms, hence one of the difficulties in
>deriving them. OTOH, if JKR wanted to use Arabella as a Latin word to convey
>something, then I think she would *probably* use the obvious meaning.

Especially when the obvious meaning makes a great deal of sense in the 
context of the Potterverse as we know it. :-)

 >I really don't think we have to fight over these things. Some people enjoy
>abstruse (fanciful) detective work, some people enjoy LOONacy. I like a bit
>of both, myself.

I agree with you entirely, and I wasn't fighting.  :-) My brain (and 
personality) is quite "legalistic" - I believe in rules and the need for 
them, but not for purposes of being autocratic, but because they make life 
easier when we all operate within the same framework (i.e. "rules are there 
to be broken when we appreciate just why the rules are there in the first 
place").

Whilst I'm as open as others to flights of fancy, they must have some kind 
of baseline from which to take off (sorry for mixing my metaphors). My 
objection to some of the more fanciful HP etymologies is that they display 
a major lack of understanding of the underlying facts. In effect, they 
attempt to take what we know of certain character or place names and 
stretch the origins to make them fit. Sometimes stretching is unnecessary, 
but a little knowledge of the underlying rules (in this case, Latin) sends 
us in one (plausible) direction, whilst ignorance of those rules sends us 
in another, IMO implausible one.

(did that make sense?)

--
GulPlum AKA Richard, off for 40 winks :-)