What's in Snape'sname?

Geoff Bannister gbannister10 at tiscali.co.uk
Wed Feb 15 07:50:52 UTC 2006


No: HPFGUIDX 148176

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "justcarol67" <justcarol67 at ...> 
wrote:

Carol:
> And just to throw another little thought into the mix, kids often
> create cruel nicknames that somewhat resemble real names but have no
> connection with actual events. Snivellus has the same initial and
> final sounds and the same number of syllables as Sirius, erm, 
Severus,
> and also has a "v" in the middle. So maybe the sound of the nickname
> has no real significance, like "loony" for "Luna" (except that Luna,
> admittedly, is rather odd). But what about Peeves's "loony, loopy
> Lupin" or Draco Malfoy's "Potty and the Weasel"? I think we should 
at
> least *consider* the possibility that there's nothing more to the
> nickname than a rather nasty desire on the part of Sirius and James 
to
> inflict pain on a "greasy little oddball up to his eyes in the Dark
> Arts." Either that or we should figure out what Harry did to deserve
> the nickname "Potty."

Geoff:
Could be a number of things. Quite often, names just get shortened or
scrambled: I have known Smith becoming Smithy, Henderson becoming
Hend, Ryan becoming Raz etc. Potty could be a similar
example. "Potty" is also a mild way of suggesting that someone is a
bit eccentric - "loony" falls into the same category. I had a couple
of nicknames as a teen - the first was "Min" - after a character in
the Goon Show - and, after my namesake ran the first four-minute
mile, I became "Roger" to many of my peers.

Interestingly, in my earlier years of teaching, I had a James Potter
as a pupil who was a real extrovert type. When he first joined the
school as a First Year, I was taking names and asked - as I often
did, "Do you prefer James or Jim" to which I got the stunning
reply, "Please sir, I like to be called Jampot"!









More information about the HPforGrownups archive