Gryffindor obviously is a reference to griffins, Slytherin obviously is a reference to snakes, Ravenclaw is both a raven and a claw all at once...
And then there's Hufflepuff.
Helga Hufflepuff of course was the founder of the house, contributing her last name and her affinity for...badgers. And while a complete nonsense word might make sense, given it's a person's last name, it seems unlikely that there's no meaning behind the name at all - with three perfectly good symbolic names right next to it.
What is the meaning behind the name "Hufflepuff", and why is it the house name for Hufflepuff House?
Answer
Because that was Helga Hufflepuff’s name. There’s no deep meaning to it.
Via Professor Binns, in Chamber of Secrets:
“You all know, of course, that Hogwarts was founded over a thousand years ago – the precise date is uncertain – by the four greatest witches and wizards of the age. The four school Houses are named after them: Godric Gryffindor, Helga Hufflepuff, Rowena Ravenclaw, and Salazar Slytherin.”
The other connections seem tenuous:
- Ravenclaw’s emblem is an eagle, not a raven. Where’s the connection there?
- Do we associate Slytherin with snakes because the word “Slytherin” inherently has a snake-like quality, or because of the myths surrounding Slytherin as a Parselmouth? (The fact that it sounds like “slithering” aside, because that’s clutching at straws.)
- The word Gryffindor sounds like “griffin”, but I don’t think there’s more of a connection than that in canon.
I don’t think the fact that three of the four founders’s names are a bit like animals tells us anything important.
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