If you're a shameless Harry Potter nerd, odds are you've already looked up the origins of Harry Potter names in the past. J.K. Rowling has always been pretty open about drawing inspiration for her spells and character names from Latin meanings, mythology, or other linguistic roots. Thankfully, for those you may have missed, mental_floss has done the internet the great service of looking in depth at not just what the characters' names mean, but the hidden meaning of a ton of other references in the series. Even if you're a veritable Super Potterhead, I promise you'll get stumped by a few of these.
It continues to be a real testament to the series and the impossible infinity that is J.K. Rowling's brain that decades after the first book was published, we're still as a fandom unearthing all sorts of theories, fun easter eggs, and meanings that we missed the first, second, and bajillionth time around. (I know for a fact I am not the only semi-adult laugh-crying on the subway rereading these books on my morning commute.) The first time mental_floss address this, they covered everything from the blatant (Sirius is the dog constellation, for those of you not paying attention in astronomy) to the WHOAWHOAWHOA (the Merope origins kind of blew my mind).
The first video they posted mostly fixates on character names, from your faves:
To the slightly more obscure:
Here's the full video of characters' names you might have missed the meanings to:
This video could have saved Fred and George a ton of time and money re: that whole Ludo Bagman nonsense, JUST SAYING. Also, I love how Remus Lupin's parents low key doomed him with that name from infancy. I'm glad my parents didn't name me something like "first name zombie, last name easy victim". This is what you get for not paying attention to Muggle linguistics, y'all.
But the name meanings don't stop there — J.K. Rowling was (obviously) not messing around here, guys. To follow up their first video of character name origins, mental_floss released a second revealing the meanings of a bunch of others as well. It seemed that J.K. Rowling drew from the roots of a ton of different languages, again leading me to wonder if she is, in fact, an immortal being with infinite knowledge who is throwing us off the scent with all this talk about ~magic~. (At the very least we know who has all the Hallows now, don't we?)
Unrelated, someone at mental_floss has gorgeous handwriting, so props. Here's the follow-up video, for all your nerdy needs:
Does anyone else's brain feel two times as large now? Time to go reread the books with all of this contextualized — see you all in a week, once I manage to swim my way out of my TEARS.
Images: mental_floss/Facebook; Warner Bros Pictures
