Debate: Harry Potter and Ginny's children's names

[February Fortescue]

It seems to me as if so many don't like the names Harry and Ginny chose for their three children:

James Sirius....Albus Severus....Lily Luna....

I absolutely disagree. Did anyone think it was odd when George named his son after his brother, Fred? When Percy named his daughter for his mother, Molly? When Lupin and Tonks chose to honor her father when they named their son Teddy? Harry and Ginny, in choosing the names James and Lily, chose to honor Harry's parents. Sirius was Harry's godfather, and no one would be naming a child for him, so he chose to honor him in a middle name. I can understand why Harry would pair the names of James and Sirius, since the two were best friends. I think they wanted Luna to truly know that she did have friends who truly cared about her, so they honored her by using Luna for a middle name. Lily Luna sounds great together.

Albus and Severus would never have offspring and no siblings with children, so Harry and Ginny chose to honor them as well. I think the two names were paired because they were both Headmasters and they both helped significantly in winning the war. I'm no fan of Dumbledore's, but Harry was. And I don't often take Rowling to heart when she talks about the series, but in the case of Snape, she said on Twitter that

Snape didn't die for 'ideals'. He died in an attempt to expiate his own guilt. He could have broken cover at any time to save himself but he chose not to tell Voldemort that the latter was making a fatal error in targeting Harry. Snape's silence ensured Harry's victory.

she also said that

In honouring Snape, Harry hoped in his heart that he too would be forgiven. The deaths at the Battle of Hogwarts would haunt Harry forever.

Source

These ideas make complete sense to me.

Although, I do have to admit, Dobby Hedwig would have worked nicely as well!

[Prof. Will Lestrange]

I feel like I was just talking about this very thing back in the Dungeons! In any event... I think that Harry was right to honour Severus Snape for the sheer amount the professor had sacrificed. (To be fair, I also believe that Snape altered his Pensieve to show an image of him calculated to make Harry approve, but that's entirely beside the point.) That said, I think Albus Dumbledore was so callous with Harry Potter (and worse still with Sirius Black) that I would never think it was a good idea to name a kid after him!

[Prof. Maxim Trevelyan]

I have mentioned several times in HOL halls that I think the names from the epilogue (and some that we find out later) are dumb. I personally think naming children after living or dead people that were close to you is rather weird, but I also think all of the Potter children's names are burdensome for the children and come with a huge amount of baggage.

Some of the people children are named after were not nice at all (Snape and arguably, Dumbledore; one could also potentially say that Fred was a bully to some). It would have been far kinder to either not name them after dead people or simply have them as middle names. Ron and Hermione went in far better and healthier direction, as well as most of the Weasley family.

It also feels as if Ginny did not really get much sway in the naming of her children, but she wanted to allow Harry to honor memories of those he lost.

[Astor Arensin]

I agree that Lily Luna is a nice name, but I'm a bit iffy about James Sirius. James Potter was a bully in his teenage years, and yes, he may have matured into a lovely young man, but that doesn't change what he and his best friend Sirius did to other students. On the other hand, Sirius also seems like he didn't grow up too much, possibly due to his 12 years of suffering in Azkaban with dementors breaking down his mind. Then Albus Severus, as stated in other places many times before, I'm not too fond of Severus Snape as Rowling wrote him. Professor Snape was a cruel, petty man, and it was not needed, in my opinion. Snape did not need to bully students to "keep his cover as a spy," he needed to provide information to the Death Eaters about the Order and Albus Dumbledore. Next is Albus; he is a manipulative man who does things for the "greater good," whether or not he affected other people's lives to do so.
He could have chosen better names for his other two children. He perhaps could have involved his grandfather's name (Lily or James' father, or both), or Rubeus Hagrid. I understand that many of his friends that he would have considered naming his children after, were still alive and not options (Although, Luna is still alive and she had a child named after her, so perhaps that does not have much to stand on). There was Remus Lupin, but I think he left that name open for Teddy to name one of his children after.

[Lex Green]

I agree that naming the kids after James, Lily, Albus, Severus and Sirius was a good way of honouring them, but I don't think it was the right way to do so, or the right choices for the children's names, and I agree that it placed a huge burden on all three of them, particularly the boys. I don't believe that Snape or Dumbledore were truly good people - Snape genuinely believed in blood supremacy and called Lily a 'mudblood' (likely multiple times), and only switched sides in an attempt at personal gain, and Dumbledore treated multiple generations of children as his soldiers, raising them to fight battles for him. Personally, I think that Harry and Ginny could have named all three children with an original first name (ie, not one that honoured a dead person), and used James, Sirius and Lily as their middle names if they really wanted to - for instance, they could have had Joshua James, Ethan Sirius and Olivia Lily.

[Anne-Marie Gagne]

I agree with most of y'all that naming their children the way they did really just made the shoes they will already feel they need to fill because of who their parents are much worse. I feel this way with anyone naming their children after family members, especially well known ones.

They're all named after well known war heroes (even if some weren't recognized right away and I have So Many Opinions and Feelings about Albus Dumbledore). They already have expectations of being so much like their celebrity parents but then add that the legacy behind their names is just too much for children. You'd think Harry would understand the pressures of society's expectations about who his parents were (though he did have the added pressure from being the Boy-Who-Lived).

Middle names would have been a great compromise for honoring them while also giving Ginny a choice on their names. It really feels like the only name Ginny had any part of naming was her daughter's with Luna. Molly and Arthur would have been good choices for names! And honestly, Molly and Arthur did much more for Harry than Snape, Dumbledore, or Sirius ever did.

[Galena May]

I will agree with all those who said that naming their children after the people in their own lives can be an unnecessary burden to the children, creating an illusion that they have some big shoes to fill, depending upon the characteristics of the people they were named after, and as Anne- Marie said before me, Harry should have understood that, having lived in the spotlight for a long time. It can get difficult to measure up to expectations as someone famous. In any event, a child should be named something completely different in my opinion, so that they can embrace their individuality and live like themselves, free of any spotlights that come with merely having a name same as someone important or long gone, and free of the burden of the past. Personally, I would feel much better if I grow up with the theory that I have no family history and would also feel a greater drive to prove myself, as compared to auto-popularity. Ignorance is bliss, according to me, in this case.