Ever notice how many of the names in the Potter books are alliterative, such as Dudley Durnsley; Daedalus Dingle, Severus Snape?

Others? Is there any hint of a pattern?

Salazar Slytherin
Bathilda Bagshot (Wrote History of Magic, read in year 1)
Gregory Goyle

I haven't noticed a pattern, just a tendancy.

If one were to randomly pick names, one would have 1 in 26 chance of alliteration. Obviously, there isn't a random distribution, for those non mathists, this means, the chances of a last name starting with S is higher than that of Z. Given the actual distribution of names, and that first and last names are independent, the chances are probably around 1 in 15. If had I a good corpus of names, I could test this pretty quickly.

This begs the questions, why aren't there more alliterative names? Well, parents don't want their children to have them, so they don't name them. That is, first and last names are NOT independent. This turned out to be a quick lesson in probability, which hopefully makes sense to anyone who cared to read this far.

Back to Harry Potter, I've not read any of the books, so I can't say for sure, but there are probably a 100 named characters in all of them. Given only a handful of alliterative names, one can say there isn't really a tendency. Of course, if too many names were alliterative, it would be annoying, so perhaps a right balance is struck.

Finally, in alliteration and assonance, the sound repeated is important. S is often used for evil characters. The example provided to me by an English teacher was from Hurston's The Gilded Six-Bits, with Otis D. Slemmons, not alliteration, but the sibilants are clear, reminding one of a snake, and truly, Slemmons is in this allegory the serpent in the garden of Eden.

If I'm not working late tonight, I'll start a thread were we discuss this more, what letter/sound combinations invoke what reaction.

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Originally posted by Caterwauller: Salazar Slytherin

Salazar Slytherin is one of the four wizards/witches who founded Hogwarts, and after whom the four houses of Hogwarts are named.

All four are alliterative. They are Godric Gryffindor, Rowena Ravenclaw, Helga Hufflepuff, and Salazar Slytherin.

Madame Malkin (the maker of robes)
Minerva McGonagall
Piers Polkiss

Luna Lovegood

Moaning Myrtle
Nearly Headless Nick

Won-won Weasley

Being Australian, I'd happily run a book on whether the author considers the Superman comic book series as an influence, or (at closer odds) and influence of an influence. But I can't so I’ll take a punt and say that the author is a fan of Lois Lane, Lana Lang, Lex Luthor and the gang, created in the thirties and read, and watched, by many millions of kids over nearly five generations. What are the chances?

Stan Lee of Marvel comics is famous for his penchant for alliteration. An example is Spider-Man's alter-ego Peter Parker. In fact, he's so famous for alliteration that a google search on "Stan Lee alliteration" brings up lots of articles and no examples -- apparently everyone already knows them.

quote:

Back to Harry Potter, I've not read any of the books, so I can't say for sure, but there are probably a 100 named characters in all of them.

Actually, according to Jim Dale, the actor who reads the audio books for the US, there are over 200 characters who require voices. There are also many other folks named because they are authors of the books characters are reading or are mentioned for other reasons (like relatives, history lessons, etc).

A few more I've thought of:

Peter Pettigrew
Daedalus Dingle
Fawkes the Phoenix
Buckbeak (does that count?)