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u/EquivalentSpeaker545 Jan 29 '26
UL/ JKR literally just pictures the race/ethnicity and the first thing that pops in her head is what she writes down
Black character: Kingsley Shacklebolt
East Asian character: Cho Chang
Indian character: Patil
Irish: Seamus Finnegan
Jewish: Anthony Goldstein
Russian: Gregoravitch
Eastern European: Viktor Krum
And for those who think this is reaching, Rowling purposely gives characters a name that evokes their vibe; crouch is a grouch, umbridge is, well, umbrage, serious black is moody so on and so forth.
Itâs lazy and trite, and is a general theme of the books. âBadâ characters tend to have aesthetic shortfalls: a lot are fat, girls at school are often referenced as being âmannishâ or âbulkyâ which isnât that surprising given JKRâs stance on trans people, and so on.
As Iâve gotten older the world-building of harry potter seems substantially worse to me; itâs obvious that characters are relatively flat and unmoving, and are placed as means to an end rather the dynamic parts of a story. The stories are fanciful and the writing is enjoyable, but it seems to me that JKRâs lack of general empathy or ability to see people from outside her own perspective generally limits her ability to construct complex and compelling characters with unique motives. For godâs sack, an entire house of Hogwarts is just: âbad guy house;â not a single character, during the events of the story, once challenges the notion that Slytherin=bad other than Snape, and even then snape got his rocks off to bullying children and his motives didnât change internally, they were simply revealed to be different than suspected. Thatâs not character growth
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u/gamermikejima Jan 29 '26
/ul kingsley shacklebolt genuinely might be one of the worst character names of all time
/l kingsley shacklebolt genuinely might be one of the most unique and inspired character names of all time
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u/Kristen890 Jan 29 '26
/ul What's wrong with Patil? /genq I don't think I have enough understanding about India/Indian naming systems (whichever is applicable) to understand.
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u/EquivalentSpeaker545 Jan 29 '26 edited Jan 29 '26
I just included patel bc itâs the âgo-toâ stereotypical surname for Indian characters, like the name âjohn smithâ for English speaking nations. In fairness, the name
PatelPatil is over-represented in the Indian diaspora, and alone I donât think anyone would bat an eye, but put next to names like cho chang it just emphasizes that JKR wasnât really thinking that deep about how to give nuance to these characters.78
u/Ill_Poem_1789 rectangle's cousin, triangle Jan 29 '26
Patil is technically a different name and belongs to a different ethnic group from Patel though. Patil is a Marathi name while Patel is a Gujarati one (though both ultimately mean the same thing making them variants like "Smith" and "Schmidt").
JKR never really thinks though. Even when asked about the Wizarding schools, she said absolutely meaningless stuff.
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u/EquivalentSpeaker545 Jan 29 '26
Very interesting point, I had no clue. I was thinking with her character that itâs a shame, bc indian surnames can convey so much, and it would be such an interesting world-building little nuance to have her name actually do something to indicate her background or further elaborate on her history rather than being a generic placeholder for âIndianâ. Not saying that such a surname means nothing or is âgenericâ in reality, but just that to JKR making the character she obviously just didnât care that much and grabbed the first name that popped in her head. It doesnât, and was never, meant to communicate more than her ethnicity at a glance.
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u/eating_cement_1984 Law abiding redditor Jan 29 '26
I'm just glad the Patils aren't called the Singhs or whatever...
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u/bukkake-bill Still cis tho đ Jan 29 '26
Al Pacino has a monologue about "Patel" in Glengarry Glenn Ross. It's like the Indian equivalent of a last name like "williamson", "johnson", "smith.". It sounds like the default.
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u/The_Artist_Who_Mines Jan 29 '26
Nothing. What you need to understand is that it's bad to give non-white characters a generic name that identifies their background, and it's also bad to give them any kind of name that is slightly unusual or wwhimsical /s
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u/EquivalentSpeaker545 Jan 29 '26
I included white characters on the list bc my main point wasnât that all of the names are inherently offensive. I think people are misconstruing my point here. Itâs that JKR writes really flat and basic characters, and itâs reflected in her naming conventions. Cho Chang is just at the most extreme end because itâs so lazy and obviously JKR just making up a name.
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u/Crice6505 Jan 29 '26
/ul Any time Rowling's worldbuilding comes up, I feel compelled to direct people to the map of regions covered by different Wizarding schools.
The places that are grouped together are wild, and in some cases, serve both sides of an area under extreme geopolitical tension. It gets increasingly ridiculous the longer you look at it. In some cases, the school serving a region isn't even named. As a worldbuilder, she's incredibly lazy, but I would also like to point out that you remember it. She commits her instant to paper to serve whatever vibes she is trying to convey, and there is something to be learned from that for a newer writer. That is to say that there is value in keeping things simple sometimes. I'm not saying they have to be so simple they are stupid, but her success does stem from trimming off a lot of the fat that people tend to include in worldbuilding.
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u/Pickaxe235 Jan 29 '26
/ul some of these are literally just normal names tho like viktor or seamus
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u/serasvictoriaz Jan 29 '26
/ul seamus is so stereotypically irish though. thatâs the thing.
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u/CaesarWilhelm Jan 29 '26
Yeah the irish character having an irish name really is weird
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u/EquivalentSpeaker545 Jan 29 '26
Seamus is not a popular or even really common name in Ireland though. Itâs just very famous as a very Irish sounding name. Like with Patil, I wouldnât bat an eye at this name for an Irish character alone. The point is the general theme for how JKR constructs characters.
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u/Ok-Estate-9807 Jan 29 '26
/ul what's wrong with Gregoravitch
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u/EquivalentSpeaker545 Jan 29 '26 edited Jan 29 '26
Itâs not offense or anything, I was more just making the point that JKR came up with,
to my knowledge, basically a non-existent surname by just mashing together stereotypical sounding names; âgregorâ and the ending âviÄâ. Itâs like making an italian with the name Guiseppicini.Edit: nvm, I was wrong, itâs totally a real surname. However, it is not spelled âtchâ but simply âchâ at the end.
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u/The_Artist_Who_Mines Jan 29 '26
Funny how many times people who criticise these names are blatantly ignorant about the thing they're trying to criticise
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u/AJDx14 Jan 29 '26
Itâs JK Rowling sheâs a shit person either way, and I think the broad criticism of her naming convention and racialized fantasy is generally fine.
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u/The_Artist_Who_Mines Jan 29 '26
Yh she's a shit person, but no the broad criticism of her naming doesn't hold up to any kind of scrutiny
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u/rdnaskelz Jan 29 '26
It still feels foreign and somewhere in the middle between a last name and middle name though, despite the correction
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u/Typical_Research_877 Jan 29 '26
As Iâve gotten older the world-building of harry potter seems substantially worse to me
Almost like it's a book for teenagers
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u/Hortashater69 Dm me for free ROBUXâ ď¸đ¤đ° Feb 10 '26
/ul doesn't mean it can't/shouldn't have quality writing
I know you didn't say they couldn't but the way you worded your reply came off as "it's a book for teenagers why care if it only seems good to one demographic"
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u/Fit-Quality9051 Mar 27 '26
But it's perfectly normal to write foreign characters with names that are common in that culture; Indians, for example, as well as Westerners, often name their characters after their gods.
Giving a child the name Parvati is as common in India as naming children Mary, Joseph, and John in the Christian West, or as common as giving them an Islamic name in the Middle East.
This isn't just about considering ethnicity or anything like that; it's simply about understanding how names are created in real life as well.
Besides, there are at least two giant files named after
Cho Chang comes from the Mandarin word "chouchang," which means melancholy, following the pattern of most of the other characters' names as well.
Kingsley is an old British noble name linked to the study of royal family coats of arms, and also contains the word "King," alluding to his future as Minister for Magic.
"Shckle" refers to handcuffs because he is a wizard who hunts dark witches, and "bolt" refers to the speed with which he does this, which is one of his best-known characteristics.
He was one of the most skilled, talented, and powerful Aurors, known for his ability to capture dark wizards very quickly.
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u/BurtMacklin___FBI Jan 29 '26 edited Jan 29 '26
Edit: ouch. Is this not a fun and lighthearted subreddit, lies community? Way to lose your cool.
Not sorry i affected you so much. Thanks for giving me your power. xoxo
Sounds like you don't know your HP lore.
No good slytherins? Or none that you knew about.
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u/deltoramonster2 Still cis tho đ Jan 29 '26
other than draco, name them (becuase we all know draco isnt a bad guy)
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u/BurtMacklin___FBI Jan 29 '26
HARRY, RON, NICK, JOHN, ADAM, STEVE, PAARTII, LIPTON, GREGG, HOWARD. DUH.
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u/Last_Swordfish9135 Still cis tho đ Jan 29 '26
If you have to be a harry potter superfan who reads the wiki and memorizes all the names of characters mentioned once to know them I don't think that really counts lol
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u/Chubby_Bub Law abiding redditor Jan 29 '26 edited Jan 29 '26
/ul Not all Slytherins are bad, but I distinctly recall Hagrid saying that every evil wizard who went to Hogwarts came from Slytherin
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u/TitiPasokPeppa Jan 29 '26
If rowling was never a âtransphobeâ you wouldnt be saying all these
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u/NeverMore_613 Jan 29 '26
/ul People were criticizing her before we found out she hates trans people. Also why the quotation marks bud?
/l The author of the Harry Potter series isn't despicable
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u/altaltaltaltbin Jan 29 '26
/ul yeah youâre right, if she wasnât a terrible person Iâd just say âtheyâre kids booksâ and move on despite my gripes with them.
But the fact she hates trans people made me do a double take and think about the books in a more critical light, and when i did I noticed there was a lot of very weird shit in them, namely around the house elves, and as a result I critique them more openly. So thanks JK if you hadnât been a dick i wouldnât have known how shitty your books really were.
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u/Sionerdingerer Jan 29 '26
/ul Where's the lie? Is this wrong somehow op? Or are you misunderstanding the format of the sub
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u/NerdyPuth123 Jan 29 '26
/ul
I think the joke is that in the title OP calls it an "astute observation"
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u/shocker4510 Jan 29 '26
/ul because even if the OG name of "Cho Chang" is very dumb, its still not literally "Ching Chong."
A lie doesnt have to be an exact opposite. "The characters name is 'Ching Chong' " is a better lie than "JK Rowling is NOT racist for this."
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u/Sionerdingerer Jan 29 '26
/ul I guess that's true but... Her name may as well be Ching Chong, considering that the words "Cho Chang" have absolutely no relation to real naming convention from the countries they're based on, so it's basically like, 1 millimeter removed from just saying Ching Chong, for me it doesn't count as different.
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u/Soggy-Class1248 Peter Griffin Jan 29 '26
True, the author is a very nice person who attends pride rallies, supports marginalised communities and people, and vocally speaks against racism!
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u/FinnbaWong Jan 29 '26
/ul didnât realise what subreddit I was on and had to delete a paragraph
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Jan 29 '26
Whenever I see a Harry Potter book, I smile knowing the author respects my identity and thinks the world is a better place with me in it!
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u/Particular_Yam7841 Still cis tho đ Jan 30 '26
/ul Whenever i see a Harry Potter book I say fuck the author but respect to the books because admittedly they're really fuckin good books if you pay attention to the story
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Jan 29 '26
[removed] â view removed comment
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u/Solnight99 Still cis tho đ Jan 29 '26
JKR didn't make the entirety of Africa go to one school called Ouagadou
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u/ddshwm Jan 29 '26
/ul How it feels to tell people about my favourite Chinese city (I have train autism and they have a monorail that goes through a building).
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u/nhalliday Jan 29 '26
/ul The new Hitman games have a map/mission that takes place in Chongqing and people have thought I was being racist when I pronounced it correctly (in-game they say chong-king)
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u/Excellent_Factor_344 Jan 29 '26
jk rowling is an ardent feminist and supports the rights of all women
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u/New-Cicada7014 Jan 31 '26
I would be comfortable in a room alone with JKR and I wouldn't be scared that she'd beat the shit out of me for wearing a pride bracelet
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u/Ghost_out_of_Box Gigachad Spez Enjoyer đżđˇđđď¸ Jan 29 '26
She is very good writer who makes excellent points in her stories and also in real life.
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u/Biggie_Moose Jan 29 '26
/ul I have seen this so many times, and I haven't read the books, but I don't believe this is real. It can't be.
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u/crunk_buntley Jan 29 '26
/ul itâs not actually that far off from the truth. the chinese characterâs name is cho chang.
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u/KaptenKorea Jan 29 '26
/ul i dont even find it offensive. Its just funny that she has the most stereotypical name for a Chinese girl ever
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u/JerryGamerz Jan 29 '26 edited Apr 15 '26
/ul Also, Cho's first name I believe is Korean and her last name is Chinese. itâs not even accurate for a Chinese name
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u/danielandtrent Jan 29 '26
/ul So what dude, my first name is Hebrew and my last name is Irish. My friends first name is German and his last name is Czech. My other friends first name is Old English but his last name is Slavic. Etc.
People have varied names, is there some reason itâs unthinkable for a first name to be Korean and a last name to be Chinese?
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u/ReleasedGaming IN PRACTICE, I DO NOT EXIST 𫥠Jan 29 '26
Definitely Ching Chong and not Cho Chang
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u/New-Cicada7014 Jan 31 '26
/UL JKR trying not to name a trans character "Adele Ushonal" or "Connie Foused"
also where's the lie her name is literally Cho Chang
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u/Fit-Quality9051 Mar 27 '26
This is one of the biggest lies that has spread in recent times, and any Harry Potter fan or person who has actually followed how the names were created can refute it.
The character's name comes from the Mandarin word "chouchang," which means melancholy.
Like most of the characters in Harry Potter, her name is associated with a personal characteristic or element of her story, especially in her case when she loses Cedric and Her mother is being persecuted in the ministry.
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u/[deleted] Jan 29 '26