name of Salazar

[o_caipora]

No: HPFGUIDX 76719

Carolina <silmariel at t...> wrote:

> This needs clarification. I've tried to find where the thread 
started but I 
> can't, I recall an ff author asked if Slytherin could've fly from 
Spain to 
> Britain near Moorish invasion, and if Salazar was a Basque name.

I think I started this.

The origin of Slytherin's first name can be looked at in two ways. 
The "meta" question is where did Rowling get it? And the answer is, 
as someone pointed out, it's the name of the Portuguese dictator, who 
was a nasty fellow. Rowling lived in Portugal (after the 
dictatorship) and IIRC even said in an interview that that's where 
she got the name.

Looking at it from "inside" the books, the other three founders all 
have very British names. The Sorting Hats sings that Salazar 
Slytherin came "from the fen", but his name is so foreign as to 
suggest that the fen was very far away. 

It's clear that we will hear more about the founders in the next two 
books, and perhaps Rowling will elaborate on this. 

Future canon aside, the name sparks the imagination. Where could he 
have come from? The first name suggests the Iberian penninsula. The 
epic "Song of Roland" tells of Charlemagne's invasion of Spain at 
just about the right time for Slytherin to have left Spain for 
England. 

As to ethnic background, wizards are in some sense a race apart, 
misunderstood and persecuted. Robert Silverberg, in "Star of 
Gypsies", had the Gypsies be non-humans with certain magical 
abilities that humans don't have. It worked as fiction. The Basque, 
whose language is related to no other, have some analogies to the 
race of wizards, and might make good fiction too.

The Jews, of course, would work as well. In medieval times they were 
barred from the usual way of being rich (owning large amounts of land 
and exploiting the peasants) and had to resort to activities the the 
nobility would not or could not engage in, such as commerce and 
banking. History has shown those activities to be more lucrative than 
land-owning. 

I assume that analogies between the wizards and the Jews have been 
discussed here at great and probably acrimonius length (I'm new here, 
and don't know) and so will drop the topic.

My limited experience with fanfiction suggests that while a postulate 
such as "Slytherin was a foreign immigrant" just sits there, 
something specific like "Slytherin was a Basque wizard who fled the 
invasion of Spain by Charlemagne" tends to start all sorts of gears 
turning. 

Thus the initial speculation. I must say that the responses here have 
been illuminating.

 - Caipora