July 22, 2005, 08:48
Harry PotterHarry Potter -- Quidditch
Hi all. This is hic speaking, under a just-for-fun name. I've been reading the Harry Potter books, and plan to seed quite a few threads in here.
How come Quidditch is always capitalized? Other sports are not: we say
baseball, cricket, soccer, polo, football, basketball, etc., in lower case. Rowling even uses 'soccer' and 'basketball', and she lower-cases them, but
Quidditch is always capitalized. I haven't the least idea why.
July 22, 2005, 10:41
TrossLMaybe because it is the
only sport that the witch/wizard world has? We use lowercase because we have so many different sports like basketball, football, soccer, etc. They seem to only have Quidditch. (Though doesn't broom hockey seem a no-brainer for them??)
July 22, 2005, 10:45
arnieThere's a long article about the game on
Wikipedia.
It doesn't throw any light on the capitalisation issue directly, but it does say:
quote:
the game is named after Queerditch Marsh, where the earliest version of the game was played in the eleventh century
Since it was named after a place, that might be the reason for the capital letter.
July 23, 2005, 01:04
CaterwaullerSo would it qualify as an eponym?
TrossL - they have other games, though. Exploding Snap, and Wizard's Chess, to name a few.
July 24, 2005, 01:14
arnieA word named after a place is a
toponym. See tinman's list of
-nym words in
https://wordcraft.infopop.cc/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/9326...931031322#9931031322