Do you know where the name of Hogwarts comes from, the school where Harry Potter studied in the magic saga created by JK Rowling, and adapted to the cinema?
Since the beginning of the 2000s in the cinema (and well before between the pages of books written by JK Rowling), Harry Potter has been walking the long corridors of the school of wizards: a majestic castle nestled in the English countryside, and which carries the curious name of Hogwarts (in original version, Hogwarts).
But while fans of the magical saga probably know all of the establishment’s secret passages, from the Room of Requirement to the painting that provides access to the Gryffindor common room, many probably don’t know what the name refers to. strange that the castle carries.
As revealed by Jean-François Ménard (French translator of the saga) at the microphone of Gallimard Jeunesse in 2014the word “Hogwarts” is actually a funny contraction supposed to evoke… a pig covered in pustules.
“In English, it’s Hogwarts It’s an inversion of “warthog”, the warthog, that is to say literally, the “pig that has warts” (…)”, he explains.
Warner Bros.
“And I thought ‘pig wart’, that wasn’t terrible. So I tried to approach something not very appetizing for warts. I came to ‘louse’. is transformed into “bacon”.
So that’s what this word refers to, born from the imagination of JK Rowling, and skilfully reworked by Jean-François Ménard, which you may have been using since your youngest age without suspecting its origin.
“Which is quite amusing”continues the translator, “is that this word ‘Hogwarts’ has been interpreted by some as being an English word, and that was fine for me (…) because it means something in French, and at the same time it retains a somewhat English sound.”
(Re)discover all the hidden details of “Harry Potter”…
