{"id":2141,"date":"2014-05-01T12:54:31","date_gmt":"2014-05-01T11:54:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eurotalk.com\/blog\/?p=2141"},"modified":"2026-08-25T13:17:41","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T12:17:41","slug":"the-true-meaning-of-character-names-from-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/en\/news\/the-true-meaning-of-character-names-from-fiction","title":{"rendered":"The true meaning of character names from fiction"},"content":{"rendered":"

The other day, I was watching one of my favourite films, The Lion King<\/em>\u00a0(yes, I know it’s a kids’ film but I love it) and I was reminded of a fun fact<\/a>\u00a0I read recently, that many of\u00a0the characters’ names are taken\u00a0from Swahili. Simba means ‘lion’, Rafiki means ‘friend’, ‘Nala’ means ‘gift’ and Pumbaa means ‘simpleton’. Poor Pumbaa.\"At<\/a><\/p>\n

So often when we watch a film or read a book, we take for granted that the characters are just called whatever they’re called, without considering why. So here are a few more examples – some of which may be surprising, but all of which I hope will be interesting.<\/p>\n

Disney<\/h3>\n

The Lion King<\/em> isn’t the only Disney film to give its characters significant names. In Beauty and the Beast<\/em>, perhaps most obviously, the heroine’s name, Belle,\u00a0means ‘beautiful’ in French. But many of the other characters resemble their names somehow, like Mrs Potts (the teapot), Cogsworth (the clock) and everyone’s favourite candelabra, Lumi\u00e8re, which means\u00a0‘light’.<\/p>\n

In Sleeping Beauty<\/em>, the name of the villain Maleficent<\/a> comes from the Latin ‘maleficus’, meaning ‘wicked, prone to evil’. Seems appropriate. And on a similar theme, Cruella DeVille from 101 Dalmatians is pretty self-explanatory.<\/p>\n

The Jungle Book<\/em><\/h3>\n

I\u00a0think Rudyard Kipling would object to me listing this under Disney, although that might be where many people know The Jungle Book<\/em> from. Shere Khan translates roughly as ‘Tiger King<\/a>‘ (‘shir’ is ‘tiger’ – or ‘lion’ – in Persian, Punjabi and Hindi, while ‘khan’ is ‘king’ in many languages). ‘Bhalu’ (Baloo) means ‘bear’ in Hindi, and the ‘bagh’ in ‘Bagheera’ means ‘tiger’ – which is slightly confusing since Bagheera’s a panther.<\/p>\n

Lord of the Rings<\/em><\/h3>\n

In J.R.R. Tolkien’s trilogy, the character Frodo\u00a0Baggins gets his first name from the Old English word ‘fr\u00f3d<\/a>‘, which means ‘wise by experience’.<\/p>\n

Game of Thrones<\/em><\/h3>\n

The character names in George R.R. Martin’s books, and the accompanying TV\u00a0series, for the most part seem to be modern names with a slight twist (Robb, Jaime, Eddard), but there is one character whose name has a deeper meaning – Bran Stark, whose first name is Irish for\u00a0‘raven<\/a>‘. Fans of the series will know\u00a0about the three-eyed raven, who plays a significant role in Bran’s story from the start.<\/p>\n

Star Trek<\/em><\/h3>\n

I’m not much of a Star Trek<\/em> fan myself, but I have it on good authority that\u00a0Nyota Uhura’s name means ‘Star Freedom’ in Swahili.<\/p>\n

Harry Potter<\/em><\/h3>\n

Many of the characters in J.K. Rowling’s best-selling series have names that mean something, most often in French or Latin. Voldemort<\/a> (I’m\u00a0not scared to say it!) means ‘flight from death’, which is very appropriate for a character whose main goal is immortality.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the Malfoys’ surname means ‘bad faith’ in French, and perhaps the best known, because his name is a spoiler in itself – Remus Lupin, whose surname comes from ‘lupus’, which is Latin for ‘wolf’. His first name is also a reference to the story of Romulus and Remus, who were raised by wolves.<\/p>\n

Star Wars<\/em><\/h3>\n

Speaking of spoilers – according to George Lucas<\/a>, ‘Darth’ is a variation of ‘dark’ and ‘Vader’ is\u00a0Dutch for ‘father’. So I guess the Dutch probably saw the big twist coming a mile off.<\/p>\n

The Hunger Games<\/em><\/h3>\n

We’re told that Katniss Everdeen, the main character in Suzanne Collins’ books, was named for a plant, but there’s a bit more to it\u00a0than that. The katniss<\/a> plant is also known as ‘arrowhead’\u00a0and comes from the genus Sagittaria. Sagittarius – the archer. Katniss is pretty good with a bow and arrow.\u00a0See how we got there?<\/p>\n

So next time you’re enjoying your favourite movie or book, have a think about the character names, because they may have been the result of hours of debate!<\/p>\n

Has anyone got any more examples?<\/p>\n

Liz<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The other day, I was watching one of my favourite films, The Lion King\u00a0(yes, I know it’s a kids’ film…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[466,49,3],"tags":[46],"class_list":["post-2141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","category-learn-french","category-languagelearning","tag-culture"],"acf":[],"lang":"en","translations":{"en":2141},"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":466,"label":"Film"},{"value":49,"label":"French"},{"value":3,"label":"Language Learning"}],"post_tag":[{"value":46,"label":"culture"}]},"featured_image_src_large":false,"author_info":{"display_name":"Richard Howeson","author_link":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/en\/news\/author\/richard"},"comment_info":0,"category_info":[{"term_id":466,"name":"Film","slug":"film","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":466,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":4,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":466,"category_count":4,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Film","category_nicename":"film","category_parent":0},{"term_id":49,"name":"French","slug":"learn-french","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":49,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":37,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":49,"category_count":37,"category_description":"","cat_name":"French","category_nicename":"learn-french","category_parent":0},{"term_id":3,"name":"Language Learning","slug":"languagelearning","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":3,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":254,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":3,"category_count":254,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Language Learning","category_nicename":"languagelearning","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":[{"term_id":46,"name":"culture","slug":"culture","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":46,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":48,"filter":"raw"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2141"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10442,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2141\/revisions\/10442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}