#as per usual...

[zolpidem105]

rag doll, like throwin' away an old toy

[saintsenara]

if tom riddle had somehow been found in the orphanage while he was a baby and been adopted by the riddle family, do you think they would have changed his name? i cant imagine them just keeping the name marvolo. how would tom jrs life turned out if his family had raised him?

thank you very much for the ask, anon!

what tom jr.'s life would have been like if tom sr. had raised him is something i've had a couple of other asks for, so that's coming at another time.

but on the name thing:

i do think that the riddles would probably have changed wee tom's name... because "tom" is a diminutive. tom riddle sr. would legally have been "thomas", and his nickname would only have been used among close friends or family.

the norms on this have changed a lot in the past thirty-or-so years - and diminutives [including, of course, "harry"] are now widely used in britain as standalone names by all social classes - but in the 1920s it would have been thought of as extremely vulgar for a child to be legally named "tom" or "tommy" instead of "thomas".

[which is an important character detail about the canonical voldemort - he's not just legally "tom" in order to make the anagram work. it's yet another thing which marks him out as working-class among his peers at hogwarts.]

so tom jr. would definitely be upgraded to thomas, at the very least. the riddles might also consider changing his name altogether - although it's worth saying that it wouldn't automatically signify anything for him not to be named after his father [that is, tom sr. might not want his son to share his name because the idea has negative connotations for him, but nobody outside of the family would realise this]. it's much, much less common in britain - both historically and today - for firstborn sons to be named after their fathers than it is in other parts of the world, even in the [non-royal - it's more common among royalty for the establishment of dynastic mystique] upper-classes.

what is common among families from the riddles' class-background is choosing from a fairly tight selection of names which turn up across the generations.

so, let's say that tom sr. is thomas william edward riddle - and his father is william robert george riddle - and his grandfather was robert james edward riddle - and his great-grandfather was thomas george louis riddle... then we have a series of potential names for tom jr. to end up having bestowed upon him.

and i think he would. although not - i think it's worth saying - because keeping the name "marvolo" would indicate anything to wider society that the riddles would prefer to keep hidden. it sounds enough like a surname that this could be what they explained it away as - taking advantage of the fact that merope wasn't around to say otherwise to put about the story that tom jr.'s mother was some sort of exotic beauty ["marvolo" would sound plausibly like an italian surname to many english speakers, for example] who died in glamorously tragic circumstances. including the mother's maiden name as [one of] the child's middle name[s] is a common practice in britain.

instead, i think the riddles would change his name because i love to take harry-tom parallels wherever i can find them, and i imagine that they would share the dursleys' belief that not acknowledging the existence of magic would keep it away from wee tom...

[januariat]

gonna draw something so self indulgent

[frankanthonyiero]

is anybody else feeling intensely miserable today. is that just the vibe for taurus season

[foilflingza]

my brain is going at 5 mph

[headbobbingart]

Many Mariannes for some lighting practice.

[notyourguardian]

I want something to happen but I think I'm going to screw it up