As Hermione said "Most Wizards aren't very good at logic".

However in their defense, anagrams of "Voldemort" wouldn't lead directly to "Tom Marvolo Riddle" and Tom Riddle wasn't really famous, so even the anagrams containing "Tom Riddle" wouldn't attract much attention.

Dumbledor was quite aware Tom Riddle = Voldemort. He never hid it. When the big "V" came to Hogwarts to interview for the Defense Against the Dark Arts position, he was quite annoyed that Dumbledor kept calling him "Tom".

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Carl Matherly

Offical Battlestar Galactica Apologist

Named Time Magazine's 2006 "Person of the Year"

More importantly, neither Harry nor Ginny knew who Tom Riddle was. Anybody else almost certainly would have recognized the name Tom Riddle as Voldemort's birth name. But nobody was talking about V... Vol... He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. And as far as I remember, Tom did not introduce himself as "Tom Marvolo Riddle" until moments before revealing himself. IIRC, he'd introduced himself only as "Tom Riddle".

As for naming Tom "Tom", Dumbledore knew very well that invoking a name invoked power, and so it was entirely in character for Dumbledore to 1) weaken Tom by using his given name in his hearing rather than by the name of power Tom had chosen for himself, and 2) by attempting to nudge Tom back to a less malignant view of himself.

The core facet of the adult Dumbledore was his belief in personal redemption, he himself having experienced it so intimately. But I think Voldemort showed fairly clear (for a layperson, anyway), fairly early warning signs of being a sociopathic or psychopathic personality (lack of personal empathy, casual willingness to abuse people). As far as I understand psychotic abnormalities, they aren't especially self-treatable.

Dumbledore was absolutely wrong to hand him power without also seeing him treated (or at the very least diagnosed).

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Type Alt-0233 (numbers typed on the number pad) to get the accent aigue.

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New! It combines the power of science with the gentleness of your mother's best intentions!
A new miracle technique, we apply homeopathic methods to achieve scientific efficaciousness
for dilutions WAY beyond Avogadro's Limit. It's New! It's Fresh!
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It looks like I had some of the steps a bit out line, but then one question still remains. If Ginny, Ron, Hermoinie and everyone in the wizarding world except Harry knew that it was bad to say Voldemort, wouldn't they all have known it was equally wrong to mention Tom Riddle, at least to the point that when Ginny first met him in the book, something should have clicked?

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I'm not gullible because I'm a Leo.--Actually said to me by a co-worker
Never trust anyone with 'The' for a middle name. --Said to me by a guy in Denny's at 4 am.
The difference between planning and pessimism can only be seen in retrospect. -- One of mine
Truth ain't like puppies; a bunch of them running around and you get to pick the one you like best." -- Emerson on Pushing Daisies

It's not necessarily true that the whole wizarding world would have known of Tom Riddle. But wizards of Riddle's generation who attended Hogwarts would have recognized the name, and may well have accepted Riddle's decision to change his name.

Folks of other generations, however, might not have become aware of Voldemort prior to his rise to power, which happened well after the name change.

Very few people had the courage to resist Voldemort in any way, to the point of being unwilling to so much as pronounce his chosen name. Only one person who'd known him prior to his name change was ever willing to defy him openly. There seemed to be no (surviving) members of the Order of the Phoenix of Riddle's immediate generation, and even they wouldn't speak of Voldemort by name.

So while some older wizards would certainly recognize the name "Tom Riddle" had they encountered it, very few would be willing to admit it. Certainly none would volunteer that information to Harry. And neither Harry nor Ginny ever brought it up outside of their closest circle of friends.

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New! It combines the power of science with the gentleness of your mother's best intentions!
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for dilutions WAY beyond Avogadro's Limit. It's New! It's Fresh!
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Ginny was eleven and didn't talk to anyone about it. There are plenty of eleven-year-olds who couldn't tell you Mussolini's first name, and he didn't change it, or name who was Emperor of Japan during WWII. Voldemort was before her time by a solid year. Admittedly, it's not as distant as WWII, but Voldemort's last use of the name pretty much was. How many people know Lenin's real name, or Stalin's? Heck, even while he was alive, how many people knew John Wayne's?

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

I guess, it makes sense in that context, but it still seems odd to me.

So... Anyway, back on topic (sort of). In video games, and comics, and a few movies, LotR being the only exception I can think of, Dwarves seem to have a disproportionately high Scottish accent. And yes, this is something I've noticed for a while, and it's bugged me a bit since I first noticed it. I figure there must be some lost cultural reference I just don't get.

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I'm not gullible because I'm a Leo.--Actually said to me by a co-worker
Never trust anyone with 'The' for a middle name. --Said to me by a guy in Denny's at 4 am.
The difference between planning and pessimism can only be seen in retrospect. -- One of mine
Truth ain't like puppies; a bunch of them running around and you get to pick the one you like best." -- Emerson on Pushing Daisies

I don't like this one, either:
If you volunteer to join a superteam, the hero with the power most similar to yours will leave for some reason, and you'll have to replace them. Not because you're evil and planned it, but just because that's how fate has it.
For example:
I can generate force fields. I volunteer to join the Fantastic Four. Who do you think will need a replacement that day?

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"The only way to explore the universe is to go and look." - Brian Cox
Well, the best way to find out is to go there and, find out. - Raven's Cry
'Evolution and science are one thing, but you don’t mess with Yoko Ono. Everybody knows that. ' - 386sx

Johnny?

No... hmmmm...

Franklin?

Huh... a toughy... Hmmmm

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Carl Matherly

Offical Battlestar Galactica Apologist

Named Time Magazine's 2006 "Person of the Year"

But, of course, nobody makes a big deal that it's exceedingly dangerous to speak Stalin's name. If people did, I think the fact that he changed his name (and what he changed it from) would be more widely discussed.

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SeanF

"Ask to understand, but don't challenge unless you have the knowledge."--NEOWatcher

The contents of this post are ©2008 by SeanF and may not be copied or retransmitted in any form without the express written consent of SeanF

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov

Josef Vissarionovich Djugashvili

Marion Morrison

Actually, not too sure about the last one...

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If our brains were simple enough for us to understand, we'd be so simple we couldn't

QQR

Marion Michael Morrison. Or maybe Marion Robert Morrison. Or Marion Mitchell Morrison.


Pilgrim.

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The Devil offered me power. I told him I preferred aperture.

Huh? I thought it was pretty clear that Gimli in the LOTR movies does have a scottish accent. Doesn't he call people "lad and lass"?

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"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky

I wonder if the Dwarves scottish accent thing may have originated as a sort of "Highlands" parallel. Dwarves being mountain dwellers, scotland being mountainous/hilly and the like. Both having a reputation as hardcore drinkers. Etc.

__________________

New! It combines the power of science with the gentleness of your mother's best intentions!
A new miracle technique, we apply homeopathic methods to achieve scientific efficaciousness
for dilutions WAY beyond Avogadro's Limit. It's New! It's Fresh!
It's Placebo^[tm] Brand Power Drink! *[Use as directed. May increase kidney function.]

The embarassing thing is, Wayne's is the only one I knew. What does that say about me? (Don't answer that!)

Oh, and Gillian, my congratulations on actually getting Lenin, Stalin, and Wayne into the same paragraph and in an inclusively positive context. Neat feat.

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Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
Isaac Asimov

I dunno what it says about you. But this is the very first I've heard that their chosen names weren't their birth names. Huh.

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New! It combines the power of science with the gentleness of your mother's best intentions!
A new miracle technique, we apply homeopathic methods to achieve scientific efficaciousness
for dilutions WAY beyond Avogadro's Limit. It's New! It's Fresh!
It's Placebo^[tm] Brand Power Drink! *[Use as directed. May increase kidney function.]

A lot of public figures legally change their name to their nom de plume or stage name (Stan Lee, Elton John) so in a sense, it is their "real" name.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort