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gwern comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 25, chapter 96 - Less Wrong Discussion

6 Post author: NancyLebovitz 25 July 2013 04:36AM

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Comment author: RichardKennaway 25 July 2013 07:24:12PM 2 points [-]

There has previously been some speculation that the dark lord in Harry's birth prophesy is death rather than Voldemort.

Voldemort's name means "full of death". (Maybe "thief of death".) Perhaps Voldemort made himself a personification of Death in order to personally avoid it, seeking for himself alone what the Peverells sought for all?

Comment author: gwern 26 July 2013 07:21:10PM 3 points [-]

Voldemort's name means "full of death". (Maybe "thief of death".)

Sure? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Voldemort :

Some literary analysts have considered possible meanings in the name: Philip Nel states that Voldemort is derived from the French for "flight of death,"[10] and in a 2002 paper, Nilsen and Nilsen suggest that readers get a "creepy feeling" from the name Voldemort, because of the French word "mort" ("death") within it and that word's association with cognate English words derived from the Latin mors.[11]

http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Tom_Riddle :

the most accurate etymology of Voldemort would be the French sentence "Vol de mort" which literally means "Flight of death" (accurate considering the murder waves he commited and as his unique power). It is quite plausible that is the real etymology of his name as J.K. Rowling herself speaks French and had taught it once. The Catalan expression "vol de mort", also means "flight of death" or, since "Vol" may also be from the Latin root "volere" (will or desire), may mean "death wish".

Comment author: MBlume 28 July 2013 07:00:15PM 3 points [-]

I've always assumed it meant "flight from death"

Comment author: 27chaos 23 September 2014 07:25:38PM *  0 points [-]

It would be slightly interesting to read a fic in which Naming was a mechanism of magic, and Voldemort chose that specific name for very good reasons. Reasons which explained why people feared the name. Maybe he stole the Grim Reaper's power for his very own, somehow becoming Master of Death or Flight from Death or something similar, something involving an actual title with power invested into it. Neat thoughts in this area, easy for the picking. French is kind of a silly language for it, of course.

Comment author: Benquo 28 July 2013 07:38:56PM 1 point [-]

may mean "death wish".

Killing intention?

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