Etymology of Xenophilius (Was: Philosophy of Dumbledore)

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 179684

A_svirn wrote:
> > <snip> And speaking of names, why is one of the more morally 
dubious characters actually called Xenophilius? <snip> 
> 
> Pippin:
> Xenophilia and tolerance aren't the same thing. The xenophile can
tolerate xenophobia in people of a different culture and be 
completely intolerant of it in his own. <snip>
> 
Carol responds:

"Xeno" can mean "strange" as well as "foreign." (To the ancient
Greeks, they were essentially the same concept.) We see no evidence of
Xenophilius loving (or hating) foreign customs or people;
consequently, his name seems to have no connection with xenophilia. He
does, however, have a very marked love of the strange, in the sense of
odd or unusual or eccentric. (His most evident characteristic, before
we even meet him, is belief in what most other wizards reject, a trait
that he passes on to his daughter.) I don't think that Xenophilius's
"dubious morality" (he's faced with a choice between his daughter's
life and Harry Potter's, a quandary most of us wouldn't want to be in)
has anything to do with his name. OTOH, his belief in Crumple-Horned
Snorkacks and the benefits of Gnome bites and his strange idea of how
Rowena Ravenclaw's tiara must have looked mark him as very much a
lover of the strange. 

Similarly, Luna's name links her with lunacy (as well as it's supposed
cause, the moon). However, Luna, despite her strangeness, is
indisputably a good character, unlike her more ambiguous father, who
seems to be a basically good but weak man whose love for his daughter
is stronger than his principles (and with whose predicament the Trio
sympathize, despite the danger he placed them in). "Lovegood" may or
may not be ironic in Xeno's case, but I think we can take it literally
in Luna's. And we meet her before we meet him, so maybe the last name,
which alliterates with her first like that of so many other
characters, was chosen with her in mind--a loony but good character.
But Xenophilius, that eccentric believer in the weird and improbable,
is summed up by his first name: lover of the strange.

Carol, who expected Hermione's skepticism about some oddity to be
overturned by Luna and instead got Xeno being closer to right than
Hermione about the Hallows