For writers, picking the right names for characters is a small but important part of developing novels。 This process comes easily to some writers。 It’s one of the first things they decide, and everything about those characters develops naturally from there。 J。K。Rowling once admitted that naming is so "crucial" to her the some characters had 8 or 9 names before she found the right one。 (quote from WBUR interview, 1999)

As for readers, we tend to recognize characters basically by the names given to them in reading novels。 It is on this basic premise that some character analysis methods tend to analyze characters by taking recourse to their names which are linguistic or semiotic signs that play a very crucial role in the overall structure of a literary text。 Therefore decoding of the names becomes an important critical engagement in readers’ deciphering of the text。

Although there are numerous studies which have been done about Harry Potter, most of them just discussed the literature value, or compared the translation versions of the novel itself。 Rare studies were carried out to make an analysis on the naming theory and culture of Harry Potter series。 Therefore, this thesis will not only give some insights to the cultural study, especially English novel naming culture, but also offer the cultural foundation and a unique perspective to read and appreciate this novel。In this thesis, the following three questions will be mainly answered。

a。What are the archetypes of the cultural elements in characters’ names?

b。Through analyzing the archetypes of the cultural elements, what cultural origins can be traced?

c。What central traits does author tend to encode in particular characters’ signification by adding those cultural elements into their names?