Harry’s “questionable” name choices.
Idk why this pisses me off so much, but it sort of does, and I’d like to get it off my chest.
So the running joke in the HP fandom is that Harry was shit at naming his kids. I never agreed with this, for a number of reasons.
First of all, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the names James Sirius and Lily Luna. I know most people aren’t referring to these two when talking about Harry’s naming choices, but since these are two out of three kids that Harry supposedly named, already that shows that his naming skills are perfectly average. For starters, James and Lily are perfectly normal names, whether they were his parent’s names or not. And no one’s surprised that he named his kids after his parents, because why wouldn’t he? Nor is anyone surprised that he named one of his kids after his godfather.
Luna may be argued to be rather out of place, because yes, Luna was amazing, but why did Harry name his kid after her?
Well, I am absolutely convinced that Luna was Ginny’s idea. I’m not even going to back this up with any sort of evidence or headcanons, I just believe that Ginny decided to immortalise Luna’s name, which makes more sense in my opinion.
So don’t tell me that Ginny had no say in the naming.
But James and Lily aren’t what I’m talking about here.
I’m talking about Albus Severus.
Don’t get me wrong, I agree that there were a number of other people that Harry could, and should, have named his son after. But no one seems to be thinking about it from Harry’s perspective. I don’t like when people say that Harry was “being cruel” or “making a joke” when he named Albus. People saying “poor Albus. Imagine being named after a man who manipulated his father and a guy who just wanted to bang his grandmother.”
I don’t know how to tell y’all this, but Harry didn’t read his own books.
He didn’t see Dumbledore and Snape from an outsider’s perspective like we did, he saw them from his perspective. And from his perspective, Dumbledore literally manipulated him without him realising, so Harry genuinely believed that Dumbledore was a great man who only had his interests at heart. He never saw beyond that and was never able to see beyond that, and that is not 👏 Harry’s👏fault👏. This blog does not condone victim shaming.
As for Snape, Harry only saw “the real Snape” from Snape’s own memories, which, naturally, were biased. He didn’t see a guy who wanted to have sex with his mum, he saw a guy pleading with Dumbledore to keep his mother safe. He didn’t see Snape hanging out with future Death Eaters, he saw Snape being hung upside down by his father.
And yes, we saw those memories too, and were able to realise that, actually, Snape acted much more selfishly than Harry realised, but that’s the point. Harry didn’t realise. His feelings were incredibly conflicted, to the point where he couldn’t properly rationalise what he had seen. He saw Snape as a good guy.
And since they both died he wasn’t able to think back and realise Dumbledore’s manipulation, or Snape’s selfishness, because in his mind, they had both died heroes.
It’s like when a parent leaves, a father or a mother. How often is it that a child views the absent parent with rose-tinted glasses? How often is the child unable to think about the negative underside to why the parent left, and instead places them on a pedestal because they only remember the good times with them, and idolise them beyond what the parent deserves?
That’s exactly what happened with Harry. Dumbledore and Snape died heroes, which consequently caused Harry to place them on pedestals and idolise them.
You may call him immature, therefore, sticking with the metaphor of the child with the rose-tinted glasses, since usually when the child grows up and is able to see things from an adult perspective, they realise that their previous notions were wrong.
But this is only the case when they realise that the parent who left has actually done something wrong (and sometimes the case is that the parent hasn’t done anything wrong, but that’s not part of the metaphor). Because, as I reiterate, Harry didn’t think that Dumbledore or Snape had done anything wrong, so add that to him placing them on a pedestal after they had died, there’s really no surprise that Harry named his child after them.
This isn’t because he “hated Albus”, but entirely the opposite. He loved Albus and he wanted to name his son after people that he believed were great.
Don’t feel bad for Albus. Feel bad for Harry, because he grew up not knowing that the people he idolised were manipulating him and keeping him alive for selfish reasons.
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