Black Thoughts

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

If I'm remembering some of the facts from OoP incorrectly, people
correcting me will cause a flurry of activity on this list.

Sirius said that Molly Weasley was some kind of cousin by marriage to
him. I think he would say that if his grandfather had a sister, Miss
Black, and Molly's father had a sister (I make up a name), Miss Lovin,
and Miss Black and Miss Lovin each married a wizard, and those two
wizards were brothers. 

(If the two brothers' family name was Goodknight, then the wedding
announcement section of the paper (possibly the Daily Prophet, but 
for my own reasons I prefer to believe that they have a separate 
paper just for birth, engagement, marriage, death, and maybe divorce
announcements, named The Wizarding Register) would headline the one
announce ment Black-Goodknight Nuptuals and the other Lovin-Goodknight
Marriage. Then if the daughter of one of those couples married and
eventually became the mother of one of Harry's classmates, the
headline would be Goodknight-Moon Wedding.)

As I remember it, Sirius said Phineas Nigellus was his great-great-
grandfather and Arthur Weasley is his fifth cousin twice removed. 
IIRC someone said on main list that fifth cousin twice removed means
that their common ancestor was a great-great-grandparent of Sirius 
and a grandparent of Arthur, and it was probably Phineas Nigellus as
he is the only great-great-grandparent of Sirius specially pointed 
out by the text.

So I've been thinking ... That Phineas Nigellus named his daughter
Melanie Maura (and she became ancestress of Arthur Weasley) and named
his son Ciaran Cole. Ciaran Cole married a witch named Celestia (I
love that name, which was the name of the late great-aunt of a friend 
of mine) and gave their children names that reflected their mother's
name: Selene for the daughter who married Mr. Goodknight, Saturninus
for the oldest son, and Scorpius for the younger son.

In my universe, Saturninus and Scorpius both married and brought 
their wives home to 12 Grimmauld Place. (Six adults and eventually
four children, it must have been crowded.) Saturninus had two sons:
Sirius's father and Bellatrix's father. Scorpius had two daughters:
Elladora (if she was in the Black house since babyhood, she had a lot
of time to behead House Elves) and Sirius's mother. It would be tidy
if the wife's sister (Elladora) married the husband's brother
(Saturninus's other son) but tidiness lacks verisimulitude.  

(Some will tell me that it is illegal for first cousins to marry. 
That is true in some US states but not others, and why should wizards
have as many laws as Muggles? Some will tell me that it is disgusting
for first cousins to marry. So are a lot of other things those Blacks
did.)

So my current obsession to figure out their names, which surely must
be the second generation of the astronomical name tradition, altho'
that means I have to invent a way for "Elladora" to be astronomical.
If only it was "Essadora", I could say she was named after the star S
Doradus ... www.onelook.com led me to
http://nedwww.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Glossary/Glossary_D.html which
says: "S Doradus: A supergiant eclipsing binary (an Eta Carinae-type
object) in the Large Magellanic Cloud. It has a period of about 40
years. [H76]" and also says: "30 Doradus (NGC 2070): A giant HII
region, at least 300 pc across - one of the largest known - in the
Large Magellanic Cloud. It is larger and more luminous than any known
in the Galaxy. It is the brightest object (Mv = - 19) in the Cloud at
both optical and radio wavelengths, and contains the densest
concentration of W-R stars. (The brightest object near the center 
is a O+ WN star of Mv = - 10.2.) It is characterized by very rapid,
disordered, and complex motions. [H76]"

Here are websites I used to research Black family names:
http://www.astro.uiuc.edu/~kaler/sow/sowlist.html
http://www.r-clarke.org.uk/propernames1.htm
http://www.dibonsmith.com/menu.htm 

Alphard is Alpha Hydrae and the name means 'solitary'. Maybe his
parents just liked the name, or maybe he was the oldest son of a
father with a watery personal name, like Posidonius or Marinus or
Pelagius or Galen or Njord. Or Walter. 

Lately, I am imagining that Alphard was Selene's son -- first cousin
once removed to Sirius, but 'Uncle' is an easier title to say -- and
he never married or had children (I can use the name as evidence), 
so he took an interest in the little Blacks and the little Lovin
Goodknights. Maybe he had a lot of money and his will divided it 
among all the younger generation, or maybe he had somewhat less and
left it all to Sirius. If so, why did he particularly like Sirius?  

I like to think that one of Saturninus's sons was named Dubhe, Alpha
Ursae Major, one of the two "pointers" which point one way to Polaris
and the other way to Regulus, meaning 'bear', and sounding, to my
inept ears, like the Dhu that means 'black' in Irish. 

I like to think that Sirius's mother was named after the star Cursa
(of which I had never heard until this research). I like that it 
looks like "curse", altho' apparently it actually means "footstool of
Orion" -- (the said footstool is a four star group next to Rigel, of
which Cursa is the brightest). Another possibility is Shaula, which 
is the stinger of Scorpio and means 'sting'.