Translations of HBP - how the names are translated

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 145267

Geoff wrote:
<snip> 
> 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! <snip>

Carol responds:
I wonder if there's a specific connection between "Grim Old Place,"
the Blacks' ancestral home, and the resemblance of Sirius (Dog Star)
Black's Animagus form to a Grim (a doglike death omen). Admittedly
everyone dies at some point, whether they're a fictional character or
a real person, but I think Padfoot's resemblance to a Grim, which
receives so much emphasis in PoA, foreshadows his death a few books
later, and perhaps the name of his house (which is "haunted by the
spirit of his dead mother via the painting and decorated with the
heads if dead house-elfs) reinforces that foreshadowing. But of course
it's also a grim old place on a more literal and obvious level.

BTW, Geoff, you forgot to mention Kreacher ("Creature") as a pun of
this sort. Imagine being given that name by his mother! Or maybe it
was Mrs. Black who named him. If names equate to destiny in the
Potterverse (Remus Lupin, for example), poor Kreacher was doomed from
birth.

Geoff: 
> 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!!! <snip>

Carol:
Wouldn't that be Weston-above-the-Sea? (Even more pretentious, I guess.)

Carol