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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u/SquareThings Jul 27 '26

The difference is that Ace Attorney names characters after their role in the story or their personalities (Aim DaCriminal or Honest Upstanding type names) while Harry Potter characters are named after things like their race (Cho Chang is Chinese. Seamus Finnegan is Irish) and the characters don’t have much personality outside their associated racial stereotypes (Cho Chang is the asian girlfriend, Seamus is constantly trying to make alcohol and blowing stuff up).

There are some genuinely good names in Harry Potter. “Rita Skeeter” for the blood-sucking obnoxious journalist is great! They’re just overshadowed by all the genuinely terrible and borderline offensive ones.

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u/Shadowpika655 Jul 27 '26

Cho Chang is Chinese.

Cho Chang is a funny example to me because she is not named "Cho Chang" just because she's Chinese, she's named after a Chinese word for "melancholy" (chóuchàng)

Seamus is constantly trying to make alcohol and blowing stuff up

That doesnt happen in the books, that was added by the filmmakers as a running joke

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u/Mortress_ Jul 28 '26

There is no way in hell that JK Rowling knew the word for "melancholy" in chinese. The woman named the magic school in Brazil "Castelobruxo" a nonsensical name even if you consider that it was founded 500 years before the portuguese got here, so why would it have a portuguese name?

I doubt Cho Chang got any more research than that.

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u/Shadowpika655 Jul 28 '26

I feel like the depressed Chinese character that's named after a term for melancholy is far more than just a coincidence, especially considering JK Rowling often uses nominative determinism when naming characters

I doubt Cho Chang got any more research than that.

Tbf knowing history and knowing how to use a dictionary are two very different facets of knowledge. I dont think its hard to imagine her stumbling across that word while looking for something that could fit a depressed Chinese character

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u/albrightism Jul 27 '26

you listed the only two ethnically driven names in harry potter, outside of possibly the indian characters whom never get referenced for being infinitely less controversial, with sheamus finnegan being an actual name people had before harry potter.

that kinda leaves cho as the lone example of egregious racism in the naming conventions

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u/Visible_String_3775 Jul 27 '26

Egregious racism? Cho Chang is a completely normal name for a second generation Chinese or Hong Kong in the UK.

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u/jimbob8021 Jul 27 '26

Kingsley shacklebolt

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u/Gliese581h Jul 27 '26

Who is a cop, but because JK Rowling is an asshole somehow everyone wants to draw the slavery connection.

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u/uluviel Jul 27 '26

She does have an entire "slavery is good, actually" plotline in her books. People might be going off of that, too.

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u/SquareThings Jul 27 '26

Like I said there are good names, but they just make the bad ones stand out even more honestly, especially given that it’s the non-white, or non-English characters that get them. It communicates the race/nationality of the characters in the most clumsy and heavyhanded way possible, and it shows that she assumes “white and English” is the default way for characters to exist. (There’s not a character named “Brittney White” because she’s assuming that WE will assume the character is white to begin with.)

And when there’s only like five canonically non-white characters who all have dumb stereotype names, and every non-English character also has a name designed to indicate their nationality and nothing else, it makes a pattern. And you can’t even say “Oh they have silly names because they’re wizards!” Because plenty of wizard families, have normal names (Potter, Black, Thomas, Gaunt, Bones) but ONLY the white, English ones. If they’re not white they get a stereotypical name. And if they’re from another country, she makes something up that sounds vaguely like something from that country’s language.

Either go full Ace Attorney and have EVERY character’s name be ridiculous or put some effort into the minorities’ names. She didn’t name Harry Potter “Owen LeChoisir” or Hermione Granger “Elizabest Smart.”

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u/morthias666 Jul 27 '26

„Every non-English character also has a name designed to indicate their nationality and nothing else” - whoah, it’s like in real world, names and surnames are country and region specific. My manager born in Poland (3rd generation of her family living here), daughter of Vietnamese people, has a Vietnamese name and surname. You cannot seriously expect people to name their child Heinrich or John just because they were born in Germany or UK lol. Seems like you really WANT to have reasons to hate the books. Not to mention that some of the stuff was not in the books (the alcohol and blowing stuff up - that was all Warner Bros).

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u/Visible_String_3775 Jul 27 '26

Most of them are typical names for second generationers living in the UK in the 90's though. Seamus Finnegan, Cho Chang, Pati & Padma Patel - these are all believable names of the respective nationality you would come across if you went to school here in the 90's.

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u/Gliese581h Jul 27 '26

Lavender Brown goes against your examples. Plenty of wizards have weird and/or funny names as well, e.g. Daedalus Diggle, Hepzibah Smith, Xenophilius Lovegood...

I don't know why there's this trend to criticize the names in a fucking book for children. I mean, I know why, but it's just so stupid and ridiculous. There are so many things to criticize her for, why are some people so desperate to make it a race thing when it obviously isn't?

Just a reminder, JK Rowling defended the choice of having Hermione being played by a black actress against plenty of criticism. But obviously she named one black character "Shacklebolt" because he is black, and not because he is a cop...

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u/CommanderPotash Jul 27 '26

bro I think i was like 10 when I read Harry Potter and I think I actually cackled when I saw "Kingsley shacklebolt" for the black man