What do the names say about the characters? Here is the place to find out. To start with I'd like to bring up a point that a friend of mine made in an email.
"i was going through all the charas the other night. SO MANY men's end with "s" and women's end in "a"!!
severuS, luciuS, albuS remuS, siriuS, rubeuS hagrid, filiuS flitwick, arguS filch, corneliuS fudge, amoS diggory, bartemiuS crouch, mundunguS fletcher, phineaS nigellus, quirinuS quirell,
ETC. more of random names like book authors within the series...
ponomA sprout, rowenA ravenclaw, helgA hufflepuff, narcissA malfoy, irmA pince, arabellA figg, nymphadorA tonks, minervA mcgonagall, ritA skeeter, xiomarA(?) hooch,
ETC, but with female names ending in "a" these days and in the muggle world is also absurdly common, so it's hard where to draw the line."
Look at what the characters' name's represent. for example Remus Lupin and Sirius Black. Remus and romulus were raised buy a wolf and Lup comes from wolf. Sirius is the dog star so he becomes the black dog.
The other interesting thing I found on Wikidedia is the Lupin flower with a specific species being Lupinus albus or white lupin
Mugwump is a person who remains aloof from controversial issues. Dumbledore is supreme mugwump I think. Albus is latin for white.
Mundungus apparently means rubbish, which I think fits.
Minerva was a Roman goddess of crafts and wisdom.
In Roman mythology, Quirinus was a mysterious god. Minerva I'd heard of but not Quirinus.
In a search on wikipedia for Severus I came across this: Lucius Septimius Severus, (April 11, 146-February 4, 211) was Roman emperor from April 9, 193 to 211. Interestingly, I also found out that Severus is also a Saint: Severus of Avranches - silk workers, wool weavers and manufacturers
Argus Panoptes, (Argus "all eyes") was a giant with a hundred eyes.
The word sibyl comes (via Latin) from the Greek word sibylla, meaning prophetess
sinistra means political left in italian
Malfoy could be Mal Foi which is french for poor faith so he becomes a dragon of poor faith. Narcissa comes from the Greek God Narcissus who fell in love with himself. as for Lucius, this is what a wikipedia search comes up with:Lucius may derive from Latin luceo, "to be bright" - Lucius Cornelius Cinna was Julius Caesar's Father-in-Law, Lucius Sergius Catilina wasthe leader of a conspiracy in 63 BC, Lucius Antonius was brother of Mark Antony, Lucius Caesar was grandson of Augustus Caesar, Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus was later the Emperor Nero
Sprout, that's what plants do and she teaches herbology.
In Greek mythology, Phineas (also spelled Phineus) was a King of Thrace, son of Agenor who had the gift of prophecy. Ermoldus Nigellus, or Ermold the Black, was a monk of Aquitaine, who accompanied King Pippin, son of the emperor Louis I, on a campaign into Brittany in 824.
Amos: Strong; carried; brave. Amos was an 8th century B.C. Old Testament prophet
Cornelius is a name most commonly found in Ancient Roman history
Helga is a female name derived from an Old Norse word meaning "holy
A vector space (or linear space) is the basic object of study in the branch of mathematics called linear algebra or In physics and in vector calculus, a spatial vector is a concept characterized by a magnitude, which is a scalar, and a direction (which can be defined in a 3-dimensional space by the Euler angles) or In mathematics and statistics, a probability vector or stochastic vector is a vector with non-negative entries that add up to one.
peeve (v.) To cause to be annoyed or resentful. See synonyms at annoy; peeve (n.) A vexation; a grievance; peeve (n.) A resentful mood: in a peeve about the delays. This certainly fits.
In Greek mythology, virginal Hestia is the goddess of the hearth, of the right ordering of domesticity and the family
Dorcas (Aramaic for Tabitha which means gazelle) is a disciple of Joppa found in the book of Acts. She was raised from the dead by Saint Peter, also called Simon, of Galilee
Daedalus built it for King Minos, who needed the labyrinth to imprison his wife's son: Asterius, the Minotaur. Daedalus had built for Minos' wife, Pasiphae, a wooden cow so she could mate with the bull, for the Greeks imagined the Minoan bull of the sun to be an actual, earthly bull.
I did a search for pettigrew and found 5 real people on wikipedia but none of them seemed to fit with the Pettigrew in the books.
All name searches were done at Wikipedia.com and Ask.com