Finding the Founders

Where are the Founders from? This vexed question has exercised the wits of half fandom (not to mention the half-wits of fandom) for some time. In the absence of an explicit answer in canon, I cannot profess to answer, but I can make what I think are some useful suggestions.

These suggestions are based upon the following:

Notoriously, we know this much at least, that Godric came 'from wild moor', Helga from 'valley broad' or 'vale', Rowena 'from glen', and 'shrewd Slytherin' from 'fen'.

There can be little doubt that 'shrewd Slytherin' necessarily came from East Anglia, the Fen Country, and a place with a certain popular reputation for a rather dubious and monkey-like cleverness in certain strata, at least: as Rupert Brooke memorably put it, in a phrase that is fairly common currency in the educated classes in England (and one that has been very much embraced at Oxford, for obvious reasons), 'Cambridge people rarely smile, Being urban, squat, and packed with guile': which does rather chime with the CoS description of the rather simian Salazar. Moreover, whilst it is very difficult to imagine a coherent reason why - within the Potterverse's feigned history, and without considering JKR's personal history - someone from East Anglia or indeed anyone else in the British Isles would bear the name 'Salazar' in the 10th Century, it would be easy enough to back-form a cod Anglo-Saxon root for 'Slytherin': sliþrian, perhaps.**

The search for Helga's origins is a bit dodgier. One's immediate reaction to the phrase, 'the valleys', is to look to Wales. A derivation for 'Hufflepuff' is extremely difficult, unless my suggestion*** that it is an abraded form of the Norse Hvalpuf, 'Whale-spout', holds merit. Why Norse? Because 'Helga' is a classic sample of a Norse - in this context, Viking - forename. Vikings are generally associated with the Danelaw, which would place, as JKR presumably did not mean to place, Helga's origins in the East of England, which is already occupied by Slytherin, and, what's more, which isn't an area noted for vales and broad valleys (which, where they exist, as in the Northeast, would tend to be called, rather, 'dales'). But if we look to Wales, we find that at the time of and preceding Hogwarts's foundation, Vikings held much of the coast and some parts inland, as at Swansea (Sweyn's isle) and in the Vale of Glamorgan. I would put Helga's origins, then, in Wales, or possibly in the Welsh-influenced and Viking-raided Northwest, in Cumbria.

'Rowena' is a Saxon or Jutish name, associated with Kent, and historically borne by the daughter of Hengist whom Vortigern (the enemy of Arthur's forebears and the man who let the Saxons into Britannia) married as his second wife, in the generation before Merlin's days. 'Ravenclaw', in turn, sounds to most ears like a bye-name translated directly from the Gaelic (or possibly Welsh). But there is no reasonable means of associating 'glens' with Kent or the Southeast. 'Glen' is very typically Scottish. How, even five centuries after Rowena Hengist-daughter wed Vortigern Vorteneu, could the name Rowena make it to Scotland? There are two possibilities. The first is that the name came with such displaced Saxons as the founder of Hogsmeade, Hengist**** of Woodcroft. The second is that it made its way into Scotland through the royal families of Gwent and of Powys, who were connected with Vortigern and who were connected also with the North Welsh kingdoms that became linked with Scotland through the Romano-British patrician, Cunedda (Kenneth) Wledig (the Imperator), King of Manau Gododdin (in Scotland) & Gwynedd (in Wales). In either event, although her Christian name is clearly Saxon, there is little getting around a more immediately Scots origin for the Lady of the Glen.

We turn, then to Godric, a man who bears a Saxon baptismal name and a bye-name that suggests that he came from far enough south in England to be a part of the cultural web that linked the late Wessex kings to the Normans (Ethelred the Unready, in 1002, took as his third wife Emma of Normandy, whose grand-nephew would become William the Conqueror). It is generally presumed that 'Godric's Hollow' is named for Godric Gryffindor, and of course, Godric's Hollow is associated not only with the Potters, but with Bowman Wright, with the invention of the mechanical snitch, and with Quidditch as a whole. Finally, of course, we know that Godric Gryffindor came 'from wild moor'.

I suppose that for many people, and not only readers abroad, 'moor' tends to suggest the Pennine slopes, primarily to the eastwards of that chain, in Yorkshire, County Durham, and parts of Northumberland.

I cannot agree with placing Godric here, even bearing in mind that Saint Godric of Finchale (which is Norfolk) is strongly associated with County Durham. (Besides, one could as well argue for a different origin on a precisely similar basis by praying in aid the history of Godric the Sheriff, who died at Hastings and who was the sheriff in Berks and Bucks.)

In the first instance, in period, the northern moors are rather too far from the matrix of links between England and Normandy to explain his cognomen of Gryffindor. In the second, it leaves the South and especially the Southwest without a representative Founder. Primarily, however, the issues here are toponomastic***** and derived from JKR's personal history.

JKR, as we know, was born in Yate (adjoining Sodding Chipbury), lived in Tutshill, Glos, on the Welsh Marches, and in Winterbourne, Glos, and was up at the University of Exeter, where she read Classics and French.****** She may be considered more or less a West Countrywoman in most regards.

As I have noted before******* (http://wemyss.livejournal.com/28063.html), 'hollow' is not a particularly common element in English place names, and is perhaps most commonly connected with Ramsey Hollow in Cambs. However, a deeper look reveals that many or most of the places that include this toponymic element are located in or near the West Country, in Devon, and in Cornwall; and a deeper look still reveals that abraded forms of the element are present mostly in this same region. I would draw your attention to Holcombe (hollow coombe), National Grid Reference ST 67 49, and Holford (hollow ford), ST 15 41, in Somerset; the two Holwells (ridge in a hollow) in Dorset, respectively at ST 699 119 and ST 70 10; and, in Devon, Holbeton (hollow-bend farm), SX 61 50, Holcombe Burnell (hollow coombe), SX 85 91, Holcombe Rogus (same), ST 05 18, Hollacombe (same), SS 37 02, and Holsworthy (probably slope / hollow enclosure), SS 34 04. There is no question that JKR would be aware of these places: she has tended to set most of the families whose family life we know much about in the Vale of the River Otter (Weasley, Diggory, Lovegood, Fawcett), or in Wilts on the eastern marches of the West Country; Chudley (Chudleigh) and Falmouth are both in the region; there are Quidditch pitches on Exmoor and Bodmin Moor; and the village of Quoditch is in Devon quite near to Holsworthy and Hollacombe. Both Hollow Moor and Hollow Tor are in Devon.

Finally, of course, for truly wild moor, one cannot well improve upon Exmoor, Dartmoor, and Bodmin Moor, which are located in Devon and Somerset, in Devon, and in Cornwall, respectively, and are not likely not to have made a lasting mental impression upon an undergraduate at the University of Exeter.

In fact, using Devon, Cornwall, and the West Country as sites (e.g. Budleigh) or as bases for surnames (e.g. Dawlish) is something of a default position for JKR. The association of moors, Quidditch, Godric's Hollow, the Golden Snitch, and the links with Normandy suggested by Godric's surname, all persuade me that he is from the West Country, Devon, or Cornwall. This also 'balances' the founders: Scotland, Wales, East Anglia, and the Southwest.

But you may, of course, very well have a better idea. If so, please do offer it.

This essay was first published on Live Journal, at 8.30 BST on the 9^th October, 2006. My thanks to those who engaged in discussion at that site.

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* The collection of the greatest possible amounts of information about named individuals - usually, within an area specified - for a given period. It is exceedingly useful in considering the frequency and distribution of baptismal, sur-, and bye-names, and in suggesting relationships.

** 'Slider'.

*** In a fic.

**** Ahem.

***** The discipline of studying place-names.

****** For the foreign and the humourless, I note that the reference is to Chipping Sodbury.

******* On 30th April, 2006.