Karkaroff a educator (slavic word origins)

[maralenenok]

No: HPFGUIDX 95525

I'm Russian and just a leeettle bit obsessed with the language,
so I couldn't pass up this thread. <g>

Jenn wrote:
> I looked up all the 'slavic' sounding last names 
> through every slavic language dictionary I could 
> find and couldn't get anywhere close to a meaning. 

The only one I remember offhand (am in university without my books) 
is Polyakoff, which is a rather common last name. I knew three of 
them in school.

> The -off ending in Karkaroff and there's some Durmstrang 
> student if GoF that has the same ending for their last name 
> I don't think is Russian, or at least I've never heard any 
> Russian name end in -off but rather -ov. The -off suffix may 
> be Germanic in origin but I don't know any of those languages 
> so I can't say with any certainty. 

Actually, -off is an acceptable way of transliterating last names 
into the Latin alphabet. It's weird – more accurate
phonetically but 
less accurate grammatically.

Also, I seem to have got the impression that transliterating with -
off used to be much more common in the past. 

> However, their first names are definetly Slavic, both Igor 
> and Victor are very common Russian names; Antonin might be 
> from another slavic country but not common in Russian.

That's right. There's Antonin Dvorak, a Czech composer. 

Speaking of Antonin Dolokhov, there's a rather unpleasant
character named Dolokhov in Tolstoy's "War and Peace." He
doesn't have a canonical first name, so I always seem to connect
the
two. It always comes as a surprise when I reread and realise that it 
never says what his first name is. 

> Also I haven't seen Russia mentioned in any of the books,
> while there have been several mentions of some of the smaller 
> countries in Eastern Europe like Bulgaria and Transylvania. I 
> don't think there are any references to where Karkaroff et.al 
> are from except that Durmstrang is in the North and Krum plays 
> for Bulgaria, though I could be wrong.

I think Russia was only mentioned in "Quidditch through the
Ages" 
and "Fantastic Beasts," but can't double-check at the
moment. IIRC FB 
mentions a Russian demon called Pogrebin, and QttA talks of a few 
Russian Quidditch players. I'm also of the opinion that
Durmstrang is 
somewhere near Murmansk, or perhaps right by the Russia-Norway 
border – on either side.

I love speculating on Karkaroff's background. There isn't
enough 
information about him, and I'd love to find out more. His last
name, lack of accent, his trial as a Death Eater in England, and him 
being the Headmaster of Durmstrang (how did he get that job, anyway?) 
are all pretty intriguing to me. I don't expect JKR to elaborate
much
on any of this, though. 

It's interesting that the name Karkaroff isn't particularly
Russian 
(but I admit that my vocabulary, let alone other skills, in other 
Slavic languages is very poor indeed, and I may be easily missing 
something), despite its ending. The only possible meaning I can come 
up with is that it might be derived from the sound "karr,"
which is the how a crow's call is transcribed in Russian.
It's an omen
of death in Russsian mythology. <shrug> I don't know if it's
important or not.


> Which perhaps leads to a bigger question of what Voldemort 
> is really after? His base has been England which is where 
> he lived for most of his life and most of his activities 
> that have been mentioned have taken place in England. 

I seem to remember an interview where JKR said that Voldemort wants 
to take over the UK first, and then it's world domination on the 
agenda. Really, he's a power-hungry homicidal crazy with no sense
of when to stop. 

In another post, Sherrie wrote about Snape calling Karkaroff by his 
first name:
> I always read it as contempt - I too assumed grey-haired 
> Karkaroff to be quite a bit older than Severus, and with 
> that name, either Russian or from the old Soviet Bloc area. 

To be honest, I really don't believe he's Russian. 

...Actually, no, this isn't exactly what I mean. I don't
believe that 
he *grew up* in Russia. He seems very, very European to me (could I 
be any more subjective here? <g>). At most, I'm prepared to
believe 
that he immigrated to the UK as a small child, but I couldn't 
possibly come up with a more or less convincing argument for this. 
Except, I moved to  the US when I was nine and lived there for three 
years, and never managed to get rid of my accent. It was barely 
noticeable, but still present. 

Sherrie continued:
> In that culture, as I was taught when studying the language, to 
> address an unrelated elder by first name only is quite rude; to 
> show respect, you use the person's name and [p]atronymic (Igor 
> Ivanovich, e.g.) – unless that person was an inferior (cf. 
> Dostoevsky's Dmitri Karamazov referring to Grigori, the old family 
> retainer, by first name only).

I feel slightly tacky saying "go here", but I rambled a
little... 
okay, a *lot*, about Russian forms of address in my livejournal just 
a few days ago 
( http://www.livejournal.com/users/alpheratz/87557.html ), if
you're interested. 

I didn't read that passage as Snape expressing contempt, but as a 
sign of them being old acquaintances. Co-workers (good God, I
can't believe I just called two Death Eaters co-workers). 

FWIW, the first name and patronymic form of address isn't all
that common in the Russian immigrant communities I've ever been
in,
except with very old people, which Karkaroff isn't.

Maria Alena,
who went on for much longer than she meant to.