More about the wizarding world and empire...

[Tom Wall <thomasmwall@yahoo.com>]

No: HPFGUIDX 50927

Well, it appears that Yahoomort can force a 
post as easily as he can take one away. ;-)

Let's try this again.

Pippin wrote:
If Rowling had made Dean's last name Nkrume, 
it would destroy a parallel with the WW, 
where Muggle-style last names may indicate 
Muggle origin (as in Granger) or not (as in 
Potter).

I reply:
Um. How? I guess, what I mean is that Ebony's
point seems to be that Britain is a secular 
society. So, in a secular society, all kinds
of people, will all kinds of last names, will
reside, regardless of their ethnic histories.

In a secular society, you are just as likely to
have immigrants as you are to have third, fourth,
fifth and so forth generations of immigrants, some
with adapted names, some with their native names.

I guess what I'm getting at here is that I just 
don't see what all this fuss about names is for.
I believe that Rowling simply made a mistake.

It's just as likely to have Potters, Grangers,
Malfoys, Patils, and Changs in Britain, as it 
would be to have Costas, Menendezes, Nkrumes,
Vladoviches and Muhammads.

I think Ebony's point regarding Rowling as a
product of the post-colonial period, along with
that great quote from Zipes, is simply that
Rowling, for all of her good intentions and attempts
to divert our attention from muggle problems and onto
parallel wizard problems, is still missing some
key points. And one of those, is that since Britain
has all kinds of people, it should have all kinds
of names, and if it did, then we'd be seeing more
of those kinds of names.

One defense pops into my mind, although it is a
feeble one, to be sure.  Rowling said in an interview
that Hogwarts had roughly one thousand students. And
we've not even met five percent of them all. So there
very well may be a Nkrume at Hogwarts that we just
haven't encountered yet.

Although frankly (and the reason I said it was a feeble
defense,) I'm not sure that exonerates her... she could
be putting more of an effort in to, y'know, indicate
diversity at the school.

-Tom