Voldemort - a bilingual interpretation

[spaebrun]

No: HPFGUIDX 122379



Snorky wrote:

> Vol de mort could be a combination of German and French meaning full
> of death.  "Voll" is german for "full". "Mort" is French for "death".
> The "Death Eater" name for followers of Voldemort would make a lot of
> sense  if they felt they got their strength from Voldemort.

Reed:
Well, I've never read a *German* interpretation of the name yet!
If you want to go that way, you could add that 'mort' resembles the German 'Mord' which 
means 'murder' and argue that it is a contraction of "voll des Mordes" - "full of murder". 
Mind that this is very strange German, just at the border of grammatical correctness I'd 
say.
 
However, German 'voll' is pronounced 'foll', so it doesn't match JKR's pronounciation of 
'Voldemort'. And though being a German native speaker myself, I automatically 
pronounced the name correctly and never had the association of 'voll'. (I did think of 
'Mord' though.)
 
On the whole I definitely favour the French interpretation of the name - but it was sure 
nice to have some German mentioned here ;-)

Reed