"Dodgy" Doge and his "stupid hat" Was: CHAPDISC: DH2, In Memoriam

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 176703

Potioncat wrote:

<snip> And I can't remember who suggested that Kendra was Muggleborn.
 <snip>

Carol responds:
I thought that it was Rita but it turns out to be Auntie Muriel:

"Dumbledore's mother was a terrifying woman, simply terrifying.
Muggle-born, though I heard she pretended otherwise." Elphias Doge
protests, "She never pretended anything of the sort! Kendra was a fine
woman" (DH Am. ed. 155). So I'd say that her character was in dispute
(Muriel siding with Rita Skeeter against poor Dodgy) but her bloodline
wasn't. FWIW, that makes Dumbledore a Half-blood like most of the
other powerful wizards in the book: Voldemort, Harry, and Snape.

Potioncat wrote:
> I tended to believe Doge just because of his name. I associated
"doge" with a wise man. So I had to go look it up to see what it
really was. It was an elected magistrate in Venice. So I guess how you
might interpret the meaning of the name, might depend on what you
think about elected officials. 
> 
> Doge thinks of DD much like Ron thinks of Harry---or even Sirius of
James. So I think he tells the truth as he sees it. Aberforth of
course, thinks Doge was blind to DD's darker side. I didn't believer 
a word of Skeeter's report when I read it in this chapter. It wasn't
until later that questions came up my mind that she might have had 
some basis for some of it.

Carol:
Interesting that you had that reaction. I figured the truth was
somewhere between the two versions.

I thought of the Doge of Venice when I read Doge's name. This medieval
portrait of a Doge might give a clue as to the "stupid hat" that Doge
used to wear, mentioned by Mad-eye Moody in OoP:

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/images/9/97/Doge.jpg

I was surprised at the nicknames Rita uses for Doge ("Dodgy" and
"Dogbreath") because "doge" (related to "duke" and derived from "duc,"
Latin for "leader") is pronounced with a long "o." "Dodgy" reminds me
of Mundungus and his dodgy cauldrons. I think it means something like
shady (as in "shady deal") or not quite right. The Brits on the list
can provide a better definition. At any rate, Rita is poking fun at
him in some way, and he's clearly not a leader but a follower, so that
aspect of his name is misleading.

As for Elphias, the best I can come up with after a fairly extensive
Google search is that it's a partial transposition of Eliphas, as in
Eliphas Levi, the pseudonym of a real-life dabbler in the Occult who
ostensibly stated: "To deceive the people for the purpose of
exploiting them, to enslave them and delay their progress, or prevent
it even if possible, such is the crime of black magic." The source for
this quotation is an anti-JKR website with a lot of typographical
errors ("Elphias Levi," "Elphias Dodge," etc.), and as I know
absolutely nothing about Eliphas Levi (except that it's "iph," not
"phi," and Eliphas Levi was his attempt to transliterate his real
first and middle names, Alphonse Louis, into Hebrew), I have no idea
whether the creator of the web page knows what he's talking about. (He
sounds like a fanatic to me.)

http://kentroversypapers.blogspot.com/2005/07/intentions-of-harry-potter-author.html

Anyway, if you're curious, there's more about Eliphas Levi, the polar
opposite of poor old Elphias Doge, at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliphas_Levi

I wonder if the name is JKR's idea of a joke. (Please don't jump on me
if you're familiar with Eliphas Levi and have informed opinions
regarding him! I'm quite aware that I'm speaking from ignorance here.)

On a semi-related note, since I mentioned Mad-eye Moody in passing,
"Alastor" apparently comes from the title of a poem by Percy Shelley,
"Alastor: Or the Spirit of Solitude." According to Shelley's friend
Peacock, "Alastor" means "an evil genius" (in the sense of evil
spirit) or avenging daimon (attendant spirit). Should have been a bad
guy with that name.

Carol, thinking that Elphias (or Eliphas) would have been a more
suitable name for a certain merry-faced, golden-haired boy (whose name
is a form of Gerard and means "brave" or "hardy")