Why didn't DD reveal Voldemort's identity?

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 186805


> bboyminn:
> 
> I don't necessarily disagree with your analysis, but I will
> point out that Dumbledore may have indeed revealed details of
> Voldemort's past, just not to the world at large. But 
> Dumbledore does seem to communicate with people at the Ministry,
> if not the Minister himself. But they don't seem very eager
> to hear what Dumbledore has to say. 

Pippin:
Perhaps Dumbledore was afraid of what Voldemort would do to the people who had known him as Riddle if it looked like his efforts to leave that name behind were going to fail. It would be just like Tom to decide to kill every one of them. When Harry uses the name in public, Voldemort has already promised to kill everyone within hearing.

Or it could be that Dumbledore feared that the Ministry wouldn't think a halfblood killing other halfbloods and muggleborns was  their problem, as long as the statute of secrecy wasn't breached. 

After all, the WW isn't about to stop the Giants from killing each other, and if Fenrir had decided to kill all the other werewolves, he'd probably have gotten an OM, first class. When he's speaking to the Ministry, DD doesn't indicate that  Muggleborns are in special danger, does he?

I believe JKR said that Voldemort's ancestry is based on the idea that Hitler had Jewish ancestry. There was some attempt to use that against Hitler, but I think not so much by the allies as by other Nazis. (The evidence seems to be much shakier than in Voldemort's case.) I suppose LV would make short work of any DE's who tried to blackmail or discredit him in that way, and perhaps Dumbledore took warning by that.  

JKR does rather finesse the issue of how Voldemort went about becoming known by a name he didn't allow people to say...perhaps at first he allowed it to be written? 

Pippin