The thing is that in general when people make ‘JK Rowling naming a character’ jokes the names are always lazily given and/or based on harmful stereotypes, but that’s just… not accurate? Absolutely her names tend to give straightforward information about the character, sometimes regarding ethnicity but also sometimes regarding a werewolf being named ‘Remus Lupin’ and a villain being named ‘Dolores Umbrage’. However with the possible exception of Shacklebolt (who, despite popular belief, is far from the only black character in the series, but I guess yall are the ones who can’t remember non-white characters unless they have offensive names?) her ethnic characters just have ethnic names, that’s it. Cho Chang, is 張秋 in the official Mandarin or possibly 張卓 using a Wade-Giles romanization standard. Either way those are both real and common Chinese names. Parvati is named after a Hindu goddess, this is also a given name for Indian girls, so is Padma, so is the last name Patil. Seamus is a common Irish name and Finnegan is traditionally an Irish surname, not a given name. Minerva McGonagall is never even explicitly described as Scottish but would you look at that, everyone can understand she is Scottish just from her name. And mind you, ‘Remus Lupin’ is a stereotypical name for a werewolf character but not for a Welsh character, which he canonically is. I see Marauders fans trying to claim this was a headcanon that originated in their fandom, but his mom is canonically from Cardiff, yall did not make that up please humble yourselves. Yes, the pretty French character is literally named ‘flower of the court’, but ‘Fleur’ is also an actual French girl’s name and ‘DeLacour’ is an actual French surname. Compare this with ‘Irish Carbomb’, ‘Tali Bahn’, ‘Sue Shi’— the latter names are just blatantly racist jokes, not ethnically accurate names at all, like you people are literally just using Joanne as a flimsy excuse to be racist yourselves.
I’m really lost as to what the criticism is for giving ethnic characters accurate traditional names, unless the argument is that everyone in the series should have an English-sounding name regardless of their nationality or ethnicity which is infinitely more racist than any of the names she gave her characters. And if that IS the argument, then the people who criticize her for her names aren’t even consistent in that regard either, because they ignore the infinite possibility for characters with English sounding names to not be white (Hermione Granger in the Cursed Child, for example; Celestina Warbeck, Seraphina Picquery, Dean Thomas, Angelina Johnson, Lee Jordan, literally whoever else; I mean you can’t criticize the series for not having enough diversity and then also criticize the diversity for being too blatant?)
What’s even more funny to me is people will use movies-only details to call JKR racist, such as the fact that Seamus blows stuff up and tries to make alcohol, both of which were not written in the original books. But then by that logic, Seamus Finnegan isn’t even the ‘only’ Irish character because the Lovegoods and (for the most part) Dumbledore are also Irish. It’s just the most blatant bad-faith interpretation and regardless of your personal feelings about JK Rowling, it’s incredibly weird to intentionally paint a piece of media as more racist than it actually is by spreading disinformation to try and pad your argument for why the piece of media is bad.
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