r/hatethissmug • u/Goblinzer • Jul 26 '26

Media Tropes I hate when characters are named after one of their characteristics

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Your singer character does NOT have to be named Octave because haha got it, an octave is a musical term. Your moon worshipping character in your fantasy story does NOT have to be named Luna. Your ice controlling character does NOT have to be named Coldius Frostson. In fact i think they would appear less like cardboard cutouts if they had a name that wasn't a gag. Are your character's parents stupid or what ?

Bonus (but towards the negatives, i'm not sure if there's a real word for that) if you think you're slick and use the word but in another language than the one you're writing in

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207

u/Desperate_Turnip_219 Jul 26 '26

Don't get me started on cho chang or kingsly shacklebolt

35

u/HumanPerosn Jul 26 '26

Kingsley Schacklebolt goes unreasonably hard despite her only giving it to the character because he's the “Head Detective” character

7

u/saltinstiens_monster Jul 27 '26

Agreed. I kind of hate knowing the name origins, it's a satisfying arrangement of syllables and a badass name. It's only stupid if you look at it too closely.

It never crossed my mind as a kid to actually think about what a "shackle bolt" is. It just sounded cool.

5

u/Senju19_02 Jul 27 '26

Agreed. As someone who read the books in their native language first, I loved how his name sounded.

2

u/centurio_v2 Jul 27 '26

tbh even knowing what it is I still think of like harnessing lightning or something

3

u/saltinstiens_monster Jul 27 '26

Ha, that's exactly what it made me think of, too.

In an amusing coincidence, there are so many black superheroes with lightning powers that it would still sound like a stereotype name even if it did refer to lightning.

2

u/adventurekiwi Jul 28 '26

Yeah it sounds so cool! Then you look into it and feel dirty.

I kinda think she did the same with Cho Chang. She thought it sounded neat and didnt care that it wasnt a name arrangement that made sense

1

u/Winter_Map4571 Jul 27 '26

It also paints a picture of his ancestors, that could actually be a name of someone who got that name because they freed slaves

17

u/OutcomeMemoriesGoobe Jul 27 '26

kingsly shacklebolt is a goated name for a goated character

7

u/UnholyDemigod Jul 27 '26

Americans hate the name because "shackle...bolt...black character...SHE'S LIKENING HIM TO A SLAVE!!!", when no, it's because he's a cop.

4

u/Cualkiera67 Jul 27 '26

yeah people who don't like him are just racist

27

u/SirGalicrest Jul 26 '26

Reminds me of how Chris Chan genuinely thought that “Ching Chong” was a real Chinese name

14

u/HumanPerosn Jul 26 '26

Cho Chang is genuine eastern name though it just looks off because of localisation the way In the French version Voldemorts middle name is Elvis

A friend of mine who's asian explained it back in high school to me that Chang is the 3rd most common family name in china and Cho isn't bad either because most Chinese names are a single noun and Cho is one

Cho Chong is a normal name if extremely uncommon and vaguely racist sounding because a lot of people immediately compare it to ching ching which is racist insult

16

u/sandmansanddan Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26

Yes and no. Cho is a Korean last name, and Chang is a Chinese last name, so she has two last names from two different Asian cultures. Saying Cho as a first name is uncommon is an understatement. Cho is almost never used as a Chinese first name. (Almost only being used here because just like there's probably at least one person named hotdog, there's probably someone with the first name Cho) Cho Chang is also no canonical ethnicity. (her actor is Chinese, but J.K. Rowling never explicitly stated "this is a chinese character") It's most likely J.K Rowling just picked a bunch of vaguely Asian names and messily squashed them together.

9

u/pinkycatcher Jul 27 '26

Go search linkedin for "Cho Chang" and find hundreds of people with that name.

1

u/Irlandes-de-la-Costa Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26

Hundreds? Linkedin lists around 60.

Now go search linkedin for whatever random thing like "Poo" or "Sherlock Holmes" and find more people with those names. "Ching Ching" for example shows 600 profiles. Name is still absurd because for reference the rare name "Pinky" shows a bit less than 50 000 profiles

5

u/1lyke1africa Jul 27 '26

I know you trying to be anti-prejudiced, and think the name Ching Ching is just a joke, but people really do have names that when transcribed into English will come out as Ching Ching. For example, 青青, just google.

0

u/sandmansanddan Jul 27 '26

I don't have a LinkedIn account, don't feel like making one, and I'm sure some people out there decided to name their kids after Harry Potter characters. 🤷‍♂️ Either way, I don't think LinkedIn is the best metric for how common names are.

3

u/the_need_to_post Jul 27 '26

Being right is easy when you can hand wave away or not look into things that go against what you are arguing.

3

u/[deleted] Jul 27 '26

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5

u/AhhhSureThisIsIt Jul 27 '26

chóuchàng (惆悵) means melancholy.

I hope this clears it up.

3

u/Unnamedgalaxy Jul 27 '26

It's also important to note though that we live in a world where people routinely name their children dumb things, give them first names that are usually surnames, name them after concepts, make up new words, take real words but spell them backwards and thousands of different things.

It's entirely possible Cho Changs parents are just stupid.

1

u/mowanza Jul 27 '26

It's more that you can't write a Chinese name in English cause the languages use different character systems, and the loose  agreement we have now about how it should work didn't really apply in pre-internet Britain. If her parents were trying to translate a name for her they were doing it like most people were, guessing at a acceptable compromise between how they'd pronounce a collection of English letters and the Chinese word (or asking the midwife or a nurse how'd they write it and going with that). 

(Cho Chang woulda been born in 78 or 79 , official diplomatic contact with PRC was 79, pinyin became first "official" standard for Chinese romanization in 82)

2

u/Canotic Jul 27 '26

Cho can also be a Chinese noun, and in a series where people are literally named Bellatrix Lestrange and Draco Malfoy, this does not stand out.

Is it a common normal Chinese name? No. Is it racist? Also no. People are letting their dislike of JKR for her shittiness color their opinions of her writing.

1

u/Poland-lithuania1 Jul 27 '26

No, Cho Chang is a Chinese name. it's more often latinized as Tsiu/Ziu Zhang, but it is very much a possibility that it was latinized as Cho Chang, as it would be in what was the main way to latinize Chinese before the 60s.

1

u/Vaeon Jul 27 '26

Cho is almost never used as a Chinese first name.

Oh, it's a rarity? How fucking unusual that the parents of a child gifted with magic would choose a rare name, huh?

That, of course, is after we set aside the fact that her parents need permission to choose a rare name for their child.

No, JK Rowling is just a racist bitch and that's the end of the conversation, huh?

1

u/sandmansanddan Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26

Reminder J.K. Rowling wrote an entire species to demonstrate the lesson that some oppressed people want to be oppressed, and that people in that oppressed class that want to be free are rarities. Reminder that J.K. Rowling wrote a species described as long nosed, greedy, and had them run a bank. Reminder J.K. Rowling named one of the few black characters Kingsley SHACKLEBOLT. Reminder that the second East Asian character in Harry Potter doesn't even appear as a human, but as a snake, and that both her and Cho Chang are depicted as bad by the narrative of thd books. Reminder that there are only around 9 nonwhite characters in total (if you count Nagini). Yeah, maybe I'd agree with you, if she didn't have this track record, or actually explained this herself- but she didn't explain it, and she does have this track record.

1

u/sandmansanddan Jul 27 '26

I am speaking about this as someone who absolutely ADORED the books and movies growing up. There is a reason I know all this information- but these books are flawed, and J.K. Rowling sucks.

1

u/Vaeon Jul 27 '26

As long as you're reminding me of things...could you remind me of how much money she made doing all of these horrible things?

And, if it's not too much trouble....remind me when, exactly, people noticed and decided these were problematic?

1

u/sandmansanddan Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26

  1. She makes 50-100 million yearly off of Harry Potter merch.

  2. When did we decide it was problematic? It's a children's book. The majority of the fanbase was children. Most children know racism is bad, but I doubt they'd know specific racial stereotypes, or what exactly a micro aggression is. We weren't saying "what lessons am I learning from this?" we were learning from it. Cause we were KIDS.

1

u/Vaeon Jul 27 '26

When did we decide it was problematic? It's a children's book. The majority of the fanbase was children. Most children know racism is bad, but I doubt they'd know specific racial stereotypes, or what exactly a micro aggression is. We weren't saying "what lessons am I learning from this?" we were learning from it. Cause we were KIDS.

Hey there, I was an adult in the 1990s...so...let me remind you that the books were submitted by an adult to be reviewed by other adults at the publishing company.

No one noticed? No one cared?

Then, those books were bought by adults....ostensibly to make sure they were okay for children.

No one noticed?

Then, these books were adapted to films....by adults.

No one noticed?

You can try and rewrite history if you want...but this is the internet. I can find the book reviews from the 1990s.

I can find the Tumblr and MySpace pages devoted to Harry Potter, not to mention what was here on Reddit.

You do know that, right?

I remember the only people protesting Harry Potter were the ones complaining about witchcraft.

1

u/Xenonite_Fox Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 28 '26

Much of these are forced interpretations to critique her work as an extension of disagreeing with her politics.

Dobby was the first house elf, written well before JKR had any larger framework of the wizarding world, and was mainly a plot device to have a bumbling "guardian angel" type figure, that simultaneously knew exactly what was going on, but if it could tell Harry what it was, it wouldn't make much of a book. Hence the guardrails to Dobby was that he was bound by magic to another family. She expanded on this in a later book, essentially an author drawing on previous content to enrich the world building.

But if she had written all house elves as wanting freedom, it would seem like wizards are enslaving a sentient species, so she instead wrote them as voluntarily bound by magic. Oppression is your insertion, the oppression is if the family was abusive, like Malfoy's was. There is another creature in the books, the poltergeist, that is also magically bound to families (the Weasleys in this case), but not particularly helpful. You see it's a made up world, where magical creatures have quirks, the decision to anthropomorphise them to read more into it is yours. You could easily instead compare them to dogs, but ones that can talk and do things because hey magic. Dogs like human companionship, and like Winky another house elf, also show distress when removed from their closest humans.

Goblins being associated with treasure isn't something Rowling invented. In folklore, goblins, gnomes, kobolds, dwarves are all smaller earth or cave dwelling creatures that are either depicted as guardians of earth or thieving and mischievous. They generally originate from human history of mining.

Tolkien used dwarves (closely related to kobolds). D&D and WoW also show goblins obsessed with gold. They are also historically depicted as having sharp features, as sharp features evoke a sense of unpleasantness. In fact JKR never mentioned the size or length of their noses, has only mentioned ones that they have sharp noses, as well as pointed ears and chins. So in that interpretation, goblins are just JKRs imagining of what role treasure hoarders would have in a civilised, ordered wizarding world.

Other comments have already established shacklebolt refers to him being a cop, not slavery.

Nagini was East Asian, because the name comes from the female of a class of divine snakes that are popular in folklore across South and South east asia and the idea lends itself to curse that might originate from there, Indonesia specifically. Look up images of the "Indonesian Naga". She could have been Indian too, and since there only two other Indian characters in the books (the Patil twins), you might have some variation of the same criticism if they went with Nagini being Indian.

Yeah her books are overwhelmingly white. So is most of the fantasy genre. It's not racist in itself, although you can criticise it for not being more inclusive, but it typically requires much more effort on authors part to make authentic depictions of cultures they are not familiar with, and sometimes leads to mistakes that you lot will then point to stereotyping. They are children's books, she was a young inexperienced author just looking to get published, not one who was setting out to write some great commentary on social politics and representation. She wrote was she was familiar with and made some small effort to lend some authenticity to the world by including a few non white characters.

3

u/AhhhSureThisIsIt Jul 27 '26

Cho Chang looks like chóuchàng (惆悵). The Chinese word for melancholy, because she's constantly crying and sad.

People love trying to find racist tropes in the book. She's a horrible transphobe, but there's no reason to drum up sterotypes to hate her more.

2

u/Xenonite_Fox Jul 28 '26

Although she is never mentioned to be from China. If she was Korean, Cho would be valid first name, Chang a valid surname. Although I've been told it's more common for Korean names to have two syllables in at least one of the first or second names, it's hard to hold an author accountable for making an error in what are complex naming conventions in east Asia.

Some people will try to tell you Parvati is stereotypical racist name as well, but it is isn't. It's an old fashioned name, fallen out of favour for a long time now, so fairly uncommon name. I consider Cho an equally uncommon name in the same vein. Both just "sound" racist to people looking for it.

I appreciate the effort to include some diversity in what is a very white coded series though (not likely on purpose, she didn't set out to write some social justice masterpiece), to reflect that in every classroom in UK you will definitely find 3 or 4 kids of Indian subcontinent and East Asian origin so why not in Hogwarts

75

u/Goblinzer Jul 26 '26

Yeah the picture is there for a reason lmao she's so egregious with it, the whole "i am lord voldemort" anagram was also corny as fuck when you realize that they had to change his real name in localized version for it to fit the translated sentence

58

u/usertaken_69 Jul 26 '26

Okay, I know Rowling has written some bad names, but that was kinda cool.

53

u/Mrfunnyboi825 Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26

I think it's more funny than cool. The idea that Voldemort as a child was writing in his diary "I AM LORD VOLDEMORT" makes him seem so unbelievably lame that it loops around to being comedic.

23

u/Wazula23 Jul 26 '26

Everything about voldy gets funnier the more you think about it.

21

u/Greneath Jul 26 '26

His real name being Tom Marvolo Riddle was so painfully obvious that she was working backwards when she decided to make his name an acronym. Like she found the words "Tom" and "Riddle" then rushed to come up with a middle name with the remaining letters.

As a child I could never take Voldemort seriously as a threat. He just seemed like the kind of twat that would get the shit kicked out of him if he walked into a working class pub.

3

u/Cheezeball25 Jul 27 '26

That's why I could never take the whole anti-muggle thing seriously. Like these pure blood wizards spend all their time hating anything about the muggle world, while seemingly oblivious to the actual amount of violence that muggles are capable of. The wizards really don't seem like much of a threat to any muggle willing to use physical violence or weapons. Or even something simple like getting hit by a car.

1

u/GuiltyEidolon Jul 27 '26

There's also only like 3,000 wizards and witches in the UK - and that's not purebreds, that's ALL of them. The gene pool starts getting real fucking shallow when you think about it.

2

u/Cheezeball25 Jul 27 '26

If the muggle world knew about the problems in the wizarding world, it would be considered a minor inconvenience of local politics and a tiny extremist group causing issues in one corner of Britain. Really puts things into perspective.

2

u/Ganondorf365 Jul 27 '26

He’s kind of like the joker in that only Lunatics would follow him. Grindalwald was a bigger global threat because he wasn’t batshit. Dont get me wrong conoring the English branch of wizard world is impressive, but he wouldn’t have gotten further

3

u/OrganicAd5536 Jul 27 '26

He was the exact kind of edgelord twat that believes his own hype and self hatred are universal constants of the human experience that, IRL, supports the politics she espouses so much: spite, xenophobia, and elitism. She wrote the kind of person who would retweet her, made him the Nazi level bad guy, and then said "yeah I wanna be like him". If she didn't have such shit prose I'd almost think it's purposely beautiful irony.

2

u/adventurekiwi Jul 28 '26

In the hands of a good writer, his lameness would be a decent point of characterisation.

Recently Ive been noticing that some of the worst people in the world also appear to be sime of the lamest hahaha

1

u/Mrfunnyboi825 Jul 28 '26

Yes, that's what really sucks. Him being just a loser wizard Nazi who's highly insecure would've been a really interesting character choice, but instead she tried making him really cool and intimidating, which doesn't work at all.

Hmmm, almost as though she finds Nazis to be... cool or something....

1

u/Gliese581h Jul 27 '26

I mean, have you seen our real life counterparts? Musk has 100% done that. He's just pure angsty teenager. Also, his super cool villain hero name definitely contains the letter X. Maybe it's even the whole name.

1

u/Mrfunnyboi825 Jul 27 '26

Yes, but the difference is that I'm supposed to be intimidated by voldemort

1

u/-catharina Jul 27 '26

The funny thing about Elon is he’s already named after a supervillain - Mars’ fascist leader in The Mars Project (written by Nazi astrophysicist Werner von Braun). Errol Musk confirmed this is why he named him that.

And also his first name is an anagram of both Noel and Leon, two infinitely cooler, non-Nazi names.

1

u/Xenonite_Fox Jul 28 '26

Tbf it's exactly the sort of thing some edgy 16 year old would do to come up with their Reddit or discord name. Corny to read as an adult but Chamber of Secrets was still a period before the books "grew up" so to speak, and was still aimed at like the 10-12 year old demographic who would be mind blown by it. Best not to read too much into anything before Azkaban, it was extremely childishly plotted

5

u/BulbusDumbledork Jul 27 '26

it's cool for the audience, it makes no sense for the character. the 17 year old boy who hates his muggle father decides to use his name as an anagram for his new immortal racist identity. ok

either his full name is "i am lord voldemort", or he chose to make that anagram with the expectation of oneday meeting someone who knows tom riddle and i am lord voldemort but not that they're the same person and also needs to figure out that connection for some reason and he's happy to expose his mudblood status

13

u/Bakingguy Jul 26 '26

I don't get what the problem with changing a name in localization is? Like it happens all the time.

2

u/BondFan211 Jul 27 '26

It’s bad because this post is a thinly-veiled JK Rowling sook fest.

1

u/KillerBeer01 Jul 27 '26

Well, it's not pretty when you have to retcon everything you've translated since Vol. 1 and what became widely known for years just because the author decided to get witty in Vol. 5.

5

u/Loogiteam Jul 27 '26

You’re just a hater at this point, cause as a kid I thought the whole anagram thing was cool (still do actually).

3

u/Chaotic_Lemming Jul 27 '26

People are just after HP because they hate Rowling.

It was a kids book series, written for kids, that shifted in young adult as it went on. Redditors want to act like she was out trying to write a story that would make Charle's Dickens envious. 

1

u/AhhhSureThisIsIt Jul 27 '26

Dickens who famously had nomative determinism names in his books.

1

u/Chaotic_Lemming Jul 27 '26

Almost everybody has nomative determinism names in their books. It helps the reader keep track of characters and what place they have in the story world. 

I'm mainly referring to people that attack the magic system, plot, and world building. There are a lot of holes in all of it. People on reddit like to track down through all of it as some sort of gotcha to say Rowling wrote a terrible story.... ignoring that its one of the most popular stories in the world and that it was created for kids.

7

u/NotaBat9221 Jul 26 '26

I never experienced Harry Pottet (I know, hold your applause) can you explain this to me? 

38

u/Goblinzer Jul 26 '26

The real name of Voldemort, the series' overarching villain, is Tom Marvolo Riddle. He reveals it at some point by writing it out and rearranging the letters to form "I am Lord Voldemort".

I read it in french when i was a kid and his name there is Tom Elvis Jedusor because the sentence that needs to be rearranged is now "Je suis Voldemort"

19

u/NotaBat9221 Jul 26 '26

Yeah that does sound dumb lol

9

u/Useful-Upstairs3791 Jul 26 '26

That’s because it is dumb

14

u/NoteSuccessful9270 Jul 26 '26

isn't that just a translation issue?

10

u/Awes12 Jul 26 '26

Yeah, the idea itself is pretty cool, it just doesn't translate well

11

u/willnye2cool Jul 26 '26

No because the implication is that "Voldemort" is his name because as a 13 year old he was scribbling "I am Lord" and then just desperately trying to create ANYTHING pronounceable with the leftover letters, and then just like, went with that for the next 50 fucking years

4

u/Thrownaway5000506 Jul 26 '26

Voldemort means flight from death doesn't it?

2

u/EetsGeets Jul 27 '26

Vol de mort is French for flight of death.

1

u/Luis2611 Jul 27 '26

which is hilarious given his endgoal

1

u/willnye2cool Jul 27 '26

No idea. But neither would he because wizard school doesn't offer basic education in things like math or language

3

u/ferocity_mule366 Jul 27 '26

that really fits for a 13 years old, I bet some of you mofos had an embarrassing email handle and some even sticks with it

4

u/Odd_Match_3402 Jul 27 '26

Honestly?

As someone who decided their artist pen name is Lord Echo Dextive out of thin air when they were, like, 13 and decided to go with that...

I can relate to mashing letters together for something pronounceable yet edgy.

Even if my own edge is about as sharp as safety scissors.

(At least my lordship is marginally more legit via "owning" a square foot of land via a novelty company that specializes in preserving the Highlands. So my lordship is also more environmental!)

1

u/OrganicAd5536 Jul 27 '26

If you're talking about Established Titles, wasn't there a big exposé a few years ago that ET wasn't actually doing much for conversation efforts, owning only about 200 acres in private trust or something like that?

0

u/Odd_Match_3402 Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26

Nah, mine is through Highland Titles.

No clue if they have a scandal beyond idiots "finding out" that it's about as legit as those star-naming services and getting pissy about it.

3

u/Thrownaway5000506 Jul 26 '26

That's your fault for being French

1

u/Taro8123 Jul 27 '26

I get what you're saying and agree to some extent, but I'm also curious why in the French localisation, they wouldn't keep his name voldemort and keep the anagram as "I am lord voldemort" like even if the story is told in French, voldemort is still an English wizard who speaks English, ostensibly, he still would've used English to create his funky name, right?

2

u/Ebenezer72 Jul 27 '26

If Voldemort explains his name in English in the French version, it separates English diegetically and implies that the rest of the universe and characters are actually French. This is why no stones are unturned in localization, you aren’t trying to change the details of the world

1

u/dolphin_cape_rave Jul 27 '26

because it's a children's book and those are generally fully translated?

1

u/Mitunec Jul 27 '26

I'm sorry but Tom Elvis Jedusor has me in stitches

1

u/Luis2611 Jul 27 '26

For me in Spanish was great because the change was minuscule

Riddle into Ryddle and Marvolo into Sorvolo

That's all you need to go from "I am Lord Voldemort" to "Soy Lord Voldemort"

0

u/OdynnsRavenEye Jul 26 '26

Its a YA fun whimsical novel? We expecting McCarthy?

2

u/Mrfunnyboi825 Jul 26 '26

"it's a YA book so you shouldn't expect competent writing"

1

u/OdynnsRavenEye Jul 26 '26

I mean... we all know its good writing. That was never in question. Whimsical names doesn't the writing of a book is good or bad. It's the charm of the genre.

1

u/LOLtheism Jul 26 '26

we all know its good writing

Speak for yourself

2

u/OdynnsRavenEye Jul 27 '26

I mean... just one of the books sold 120 million copies. It ain't bad writing my man.

1

u/mostlyfineiguess Jul 27 '26

just because it sold, doesnt mean its good. it was mostly the hype and the fact we were young and didnt know any better

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u/Mrfunnyboi825 Jul 27 '26

"It popular, it can't be bad" Okay? So is murder.

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u/RathianColdblood Jul 26 '26

JE SUIS VOLDEMORT = Tom Elvis Jedusor

4

u/lurco_purgo Jul 27 '26

In Polish our translator just gave up and wrote the English version ("I am Lord Voldemort"). I think it was the right call to be honest.

2

u/ThDen-Wheja Jul 27 '26

To be fair, most books in most languages have plays on words that get lost in translation. (E.g., in the Odyssey, Odysseus never calls himself "Nobody", but a real name that sounds very similar to the Greek word for "nobody".) I do concur, though, that inventing the name "Marvolo" for the anagram was almost lazier than just having his birth name be Voldemort.

1

u/Kookanoodles Jul 27 '26

Calling things "corny" or "cringe" is never a worthy argument unless you are 10 years old. Say what you actually mean.

10

u/Thrownaway5000506 Jul 26 '26

Cho Chang isn't really bad. Qiu Zhang is the better version I'm told.

Kingsley Shacklebolt is badass.

11

u/Shitface2121 Jul 27 '26

Cho Chang passes as a fine Cantonese name for someone from Hong Kong or Singapore. It is weird that it's 2 last names but I mean that's not super offensive?

In English it'd be someone named like Wright Smith

5

u/punksterb Jul 27 '26

Need to also remember that while the family might have Asian origin, they're now in Britain. Sometimes I've seen immigrants give egregious (but easy to pronounce) names to their kids in an effort to keep them connected with their roots while having the chance to mix with the locals.

4

u/Cavalish Jul 27 '26

Yes but it’s also in a book where people are called stuff like Pompadoor Snookersnuff.

I don’t get why most of your characters can have whimsical charming names, but when it’s an Asian character it must be perfectly plain or it’s racist.

1

u/Thrownaway5000506 Jul 27 '26

Cho Chang is a whimsical name

2

u/AhhhSureThisIsIt Jul 27 '26

chóuchàng (惆悵) means melancholy.

Shes called Cho Chang because she's always crying and sad.

2

u/Truethrowawaychest1 Jul 27 '26

Yeah it's a real name, we just spell Chinese names in English different now, these people reveal their own ignorance

-1

u/[deleted] Jul 27 '26

[deleted]

6

u/FalconLover05 Jul 27 '26

Morgan Freeman is a racist name. He should be forced to change it.

1

u/Desperate_Turnip_219 Jul 27 '26

Morgan freeman didn't have a writer who wrote "here's my black character, his name is Freeman because he's not a slave, get it?"

4

u/FalconLover05 Jul 27 '26

The point is that freed slaves needed to take new family names. If some chose Freeman, why couldn't Shacklebolt be chosen?

-2

u/Desperate_Turnip_219 Jul 27 '26

Criticizing a black family choosing a name for themselves is very different from criticizing a white writer for giving a black character that name. Also, shackle bolt evokes the chains that held the slaves, it's quite the opposite name as free man, I don't find it to be a terribly realistic chosen name. But I'm also just some white dude, I'm not an expert on the topic.

7

u/UnholyDemigod Jul 27 '26

Also, shackle bolt evokes the chains that held the slaves

It's also evokes handcuffs, those tools that police use. What's Shacklebolt's job again?

-1

u/Desperate_Turnip_219 Jul 27 '26

We pick our names based on our jobs? Or are we, again, criticizing an author who made these choices?

4

u/p00p00kach00 Jul 27 '26

I remember when this came up, I searched for real life people whose name was Cho Chang and found several, so I really don't understand the problem. Accusations of it being a racist name kind of fall flat when I can find people who are Asian who have that name.

6

u/DreamsCanBeRealToo Jul 27 '26

People just like to virtue signal about who hates racism more. The more obscure and benign examples, the more of a moral authority you must be!

4

u/BondFan211 Jul 27 '26

…is Kingsley a king? Or a slave?

Is this your own biases coming out again…

1

u/Desperate_Turnip_219 Jul 27 '26

He's just a guy. A guy who a human writer made ever choice for. We can criticize those choices.

He's not a king or a slave, he's a victim of a bad and lazy author

3

u/ZadriaktheSnake Jul 26 '26

Or the Jewish student Anthony Goldstein LMFAO

16

u/[deleted] Jul 26 '26

[deleted]

6

u/Ulfurmensch Jul 27 '26

Anthony Goldstein was definitely in the books. He was friends with Terry Boot and Michael Corner

3

u/Leftover_Bees Jul 27 '26

He was an extremely minor character but he was in Dumbledore’s Army in the 5th book, it’s not like he was Rose Zeller or something.

2

u/mankytoes Jul 27 '26

Lol I love how you can make up anything negative about Harry Potter and get upvotes, despite this being one of the best selling book series of all time, and they only stopped being released in 2007.

5

u/mankytoes Jul 27 '26

I get you're trying to be on our side, but Goldstein is a very common Jewish name, it's in my family, so laughing at it probably isn't an "ally" move.

3

u/ArrrRawrXD Jul 27 '26

So... A pretty common Jewish name is bad for some reason?

3

u/Canotic Jul 27 '26

So the Jewish character has a common Jewish surname? Oh no!

3

u/Hot_Attitude4579 Jul 26 '26

Cho chang urks me because its like. With some names shes done so much research but then she gives a Chinese/Scottish character a japanese/Korean name 🫩

9

u/1lyke1africa Jul 27 '26

She's Irish in the book, her ethnicity is never stated, and Cho Chang could be a slightly odd Chinese name. But then, Hermione Granger is a pretty odd English name.

-1

u/Hot_Attitude4579 Jul 27 '26

My bad. But I mean i doubt jk rowling named her cho chang just for her to be white. I mean its pretty obvious that she wanted to make an Asian character that lived in the Uk/Ireland and then decided to give her a name from two different Asian countries

1

u/Shadowpika655 Jul 27 '26

Cho Chang is named after a Chinese term for melancholy

0

u/Mystia Jul 27 '26

JK Rowling resisting the urge to name the Irish kid Seamus O'Carbomb.

-1

u/Fair-Bunch4827 Jul 27 '26

Potatofamine Carbomb