As a Divination teacher and the great-great-granddaughter of a celebrated seer, she is appropriately named “Sibyll” after Sibyl, prophetess in Greek legend. Think of Professor Trelawney, who teaches at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. When naming characters in the wizarding world of the Harry Potter series, she masterfully plays with the meaning, form, and sound of names. Rowling knows all about the contradictory nature of names-their undeniable influence and false promises. Names can even be disadvantageous to their owners when they are interpreted through sweeping generalizations and preconceived bias. But names just do so often fail to tell us anything useful about their possessors. After all “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Confucius cautioned that “if names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things”. Or we could argue that names do not really matter. Think of how much effort parents put into giving their new baby the perfect name. But what’s in a name really? We could say that names are important.
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