Translations of HBP - how the names are translated

[Geoff Bannister]

No: HPFGUIDX 144978

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, literature_Caro 
<literature_Caro at w...> wrote:
>
> > Geoff:
> > Curiously, as a native English speaker, I've never felt an urge 
to 
> > laugh at Neville's name. There are a number of names ending in -
bottom,
> > e.g. Longbottom, Rowbottom, Ramsbottom and Higginbottom come to 
mind,
> > which are often of North country origin and, having spent the 
early 
> > formative years of my existence in that region, I do not make a 
> > humorous connection.
> 
> > I get more chuckles out of JKR's play on other names - Diagon 
Alley,
> > Knockturn Alley, Grimmauld Place, Umbridge, Little Whinging for 
example.

Caro:
> As a non-native I do not get all of these as funny. The street 
names I
> understand, but what is it with the others? Can you explain, bedause
> in German they just keep them the way they are...
> Thanks

Geoff:
You apparently "get" Diagon Alley = diagonally, Knockturn Alley = 
nocturnally. 
 
Little Whinging from "whinge" = to complain constantly and also 
relates to "whine". It may come from Australian slang because the 
Aussies have a habit of calling the British "whinging Poms", Pom 
being a degoratory local word for we British.

Grimmauld Place. JKR lives nowadays in Edinburgh, the Scottish 
capital. "Auld" is a Scots dialect word for "old" and a  name for 
Edinburgh used in a familiar context by the Scots is "Auld Reekie" 
= "old smelly", probably coined in days before the drains were built!
 
Umbridge. There is a word in English "umbrage". To "take umbrage" 
means to take offence, to be very annoyed over something said or 
done. Hence JKR uses the word as an approximate homophone.
 
I didn't list Dumbledore, although I could have because this is an 
Old English dialect word for bumble bee. Some people have suggested 
that his Animagus form is precisely that. Interestingly, I didn't 
know about this word until I came to HP and, in the village in which 
I now live, there is a house called "Dumbeldory" which I presume may 
have belonged to a bee-keeper.

There is, of course, JKR's rather naughty play on words when Ron, in 
a Divination lesson involving the planets, asks one of the 
others "Can I see Uranus?" This is a homophone to the English 
words "your anus". For the benefit of our friends for whom English is 
not their first language, the anus is described discreetly by my 
dictionary as "the opening at the end of the digestive system through 
which solid waste leaves the body." I think Ron deserves a slap on 
the wrist for that one.. :-)

Sandy Straubhaar wrote:

P. G. Wodehouse (as in Jeeves & Wooster) used lots of bizarre English
town names in his stories, but ... I _think_ ... they are all real,
like Weston-super-Mare and Walsingford Parva and Totleigh-in-the-Wold.
Or maybe they aren't?

Weston-Super-Mare is a large coastal resort on the west coast of 
North Somerset facing down the Bristol Channel. It is rather a 
pretentious name, derived from the Latin for Weston-on-Sea!!! 

The other two places do not exist except in the imagination of PGW. 
Parva is also a bit pretentious being the Latin for "little" so you 
will sometimes get a pair of villages called "Something Magna" 
and "Something Parva". Wold is an old name for high, open land. It 
does occur in the town name Stow-on-the-Wold but I can't think of any 
others.