focus on Hermione

[romulusmmcdougal]

No: HPFGUIDX 110143

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Nora Renka" <nrenka at y...> 
wrote:

> >> Ravenclaw Bookworm:
> >> The relationship of quicksilver/mercury to the 
> >> discussion of whether she was born in 1979 or 1980 doesn't matter
> >> if the initials HG aren't important.
> > 
> > RMM:  Yes, but to dentists who use MERCURY AMALGAM every day for
> > teeth fillings, HG is darned important!  :-)
> 
Nora:
> That's also venturing into the kind of 'logic' that's at the base
of 
> Freudian word association, which has been completely and utterly 
> destroyed as having any validity.  (If interested, the best book is 
> Sebastiano Timpanaro, _The Freudian Slip_).  Using that kind 
> of 'logic', we hop from one free association to the other, with the 
> slimmest of causal chains anchoring us, in a world where everything 
> is deeply significant but can be read to be such in about, oh,
fifty 
> different ways.

RMM:
Well Nora, let me help you with the logic of it then.
For a couple of dentists who have a daughter born to them on 
Wednesday, September 19, 1979, Wednesday being the day of Mercury (Hg)
, also the day of HERMES (Greek for Mercury), it is of a little more 
significance then that since the child was a girl -- Hermione,
instead 
of Hermes, would be more appropriate for a name.

I'm sorry, but where I see great cleverness in the naming of their 
child you skeptics see nothing but pretension.

I dare say, if someone comes up with a 3 syllable word, you must
think 
that person is not just a genius, but a pretensious genius.

> >> Ravenclaw Bookworm:
> >> 
> >> << In the Q&A at the National Press Club, October 20, 1999, Jo 
> >> Rowling stated, in regard to Hermione's name, that it came from
a 
> >> character in Shakespeare's play A Winter's Tale, although Jo
says 
> >> that the characters are not at all similar. Jo thought it made
> >> sense for a couple of professional dentists to name their only 
> >> daughter something like that to show how clever they were.>>
> >> 
> >> Clever, as in pretentious, as in `look how well-read we are'.
> > 
> > RMM:
> > Now Hermione's parents are "pretentious"?  
> > I pity you folks out there who have no clue about the characters 
> > in Jo's books.  Hermione's parents are nothing of the sort.
> 

Nora:
> Fresh off the presses:
> 
> <quote>
> 
> Does Hermione have any brothers or sisters?
> 
> No, she doesn't. When I first made up Hermione I gave her a younger 
> sister, but she was very hard to work in. The younger sister was
not 
> supposed to go to Hogwarts. She was supposed to remain a Muggle. It 
> was a sideline that didn't work very well and it did not have a big 
> place in the story. I have deliberately kept Hermione's family in 
> the background. You see so much of Ron's family so I thought that I 
> would keep Hermione's family, by contrast, quite ordinary. They are 
> dentists, as you know. They are a bit bemused by their odd daughter 
> but quite proud of her all the same.
> 
> </quote>\
> 
> Everyone can read for himself, but that seems to line up a lil'
more 
> with the "We named our daughter after an obscure literary figure 
> because we wanted to be a little more intellectual than the 
> neighbors".

RMM:  
Okay Nora, are you saying "quite ordinary" equals "pretentious"?
Oh now I get it.....in your mind, an ordinary set of folks are 
typically one-upping the neighbors in everything including the naming 
of their children!!  
Hmmmmmmmmm........interesting concept of life there.....

RMM
www.hermionegranger.us