hermione2
Well, I think my speculation will turn out to be unfruitful.
I'd said earlier that Hermione's name might turn out to be important, because it sounds like an old wizarding name, even though she's the daughter of Muggles. People from old wizarding families, good and bad, tend to have classical names: the more obscure the better, and the Darker the more pronounced this trend is. The name Nymphadora, for instance, belongs to a delightful character on the good side, but from a distinctly Dark family. The name Ginevra, on the other hand, is the only name in the Muggle-loving Weasley family to betray that family's old wizarding ties. Everyone else has names that sound normal to the modern Muggle ear.
I searched in vain for any reference to that topic, so I thought that it might come up as a surprise. No one has ever mentioned the issue to JKR in interviews before. But.
I did recently run across a couple of references she made to Hermione's name in other contexts. Turns out that she just thought Hermione was a likely name to be chosen by upward-striving middle-class people for their daughter. So, there you have it.
I'd said earlier that Hermione's name might turn out to be important, because it sounds like an old wizarding name, even though she's the daughter of Muggles. People from old wizarding families, good and bad, tend to have classical names: the more obscure the better, and the Darker the more pronounced this trend is. The name Nymphadora, for instance, belongs to a delightful character on the good side, but from a distinctly Dark family. The name Ginevra, on the other hand, is the only name in the Muggle-loving Weasley family to betray that family's old wizarding ties. Everyone else has names that sound normal to the modern Muggle ear.
I searched in vain for any reference to that topic, so I thought that it might come up as a surprise. No one has ever mentioned the issue to JKR in interviews before. But.
I did recently run across a couple of references she made to Hermione's name in other contexts. Turns out that she just thought Hermione was a likely name to be chosen by upward-striving middle-class people for their daughter. So, there you have it.
Comments
oh well. it makes for a good high school class, anyway. =/
the thing to ask is, how surprised would you have been if it had in fact turned out to be something, if in the seventh book we found out something about hermione that had never been revealed before?
in the hp books? hmm... i'd have to say i wouldn't be surprised at all. so much of the time, some strange detail that you might have thought would be overinterpretation winds up being rowling's plan from the beginning.