by V. Arrow
However, clove is also the past tense of the verb to cleave, which can mean either to bind or to sever. In the Seventy-fourth Hunger Games, Clove favors fighting with a large knife, so “to sever” is the most likely origin for her name.
COIN, Alma
Although the most obvious meaning for Coin is, well, coins—cash, money—COIN is also a US military abbreviation for COunter-INsurgency operations. Given Collins’ military background and the role that Coin plays in Panem’s insurgency, this is the more likely derivation of President Coin’s surname. Another related military association: military coins, which are tokens (similar to the mockingjay crackers distributed by rebels and sympathizers in Panem’s District 8) that are given to members of covert organizations both to enhance morale and to prove membership when challenged.
Alma is, interestingly, Spanish for soul, as well as a Latin word meaning nourishing. However, it’s more likely that President Alma Coin is named for the Battle of Alma, the first battle of the Crimean War, which was fought between the Russian Empire on one side and French, British, and Ottoman Empires and the Kingdom of Sardinia on the other from 1853 to 1856. In the Battle of Alma, the British troops abandoned their usual ordered precision and fought guerilla-style, similar to the rebellion’s preferred approach.lxxxiii
The battle also spawned a folk song in the United Kingdom, the lyrics of which are reminiscent of the battle for the Capitol in Mockingjay, particularly the targeting of the Nut and Snow’s mansion:
But when the Alma came in view,
The stoutest heart it would subdue . . .
They were so strongly fortified
With batteries on the mountain side . . .
The shot and shell it fell like rain
While we the batteries strove to gain,
And many’s hero then was slain
Upon the heights of Alma.
Following the victory at the Battle of Alma, the name became a popular girls’ name in the United Kingdom, and many survivors of the battle made a pact that each man would name his firstborn son Alma.
CRANE, Seneca
The crane may be the oldest bird on Earth; there is fossil proof that they existed more than 60 million years ago. Traditionally, the crane is a bird of omen, and in Eastern symbolism, the crane represents unparalleled faithfulness—which may allude to Crane’s loyalty to the Capitol, despite being killed for treason.
The historical Seneca was tutor and later advisor to Emperor Nero. He was forced to commit suicide for conspiring to assassinate Nero but may have been innocent, echoing the uncertainty around the Hunger Games’ Seneca Crane’s hanging for his actions as Gamemaker during the Seventy-fourth Hunger Games.
It is alleged that the historical Seneca moved to Rome from Spain, which makes him, like the historical Plutarch, a high-ranking Roman official who came to the empire from outside of Rome (which suggests interesting origins for the Hunger Games’ Seneca and Plutarch). His writings expose traditional themes of Stoic philosophy, including ones consistent with the philosophy of the Games in Panem: contentment is achieved through a life in accordance with duty to the state; human suffering should be accepted and has a beneficial effect. In particular, Seneca considered it important to confront one’s own mortality.
CRAY
HEAD PEACEKEEPER OF DISTRICT 12
Cray’s name has many possible points of origin, but the most likely is the Cray-1, the world’s first supercomputer. It was later replaced by the Cray-XMP. The major function of both supercomputers was to read and decode an information request and then bring forward additional information about the query—just as Cray is in District 12 in part to keep the Capitol abreast of what is happening in the district, digging up information and bringing it forward to his superiors.
Alternately, it is possible that Cray is named for crayfish, which are freshwater crustaceans that feed on both living and dead organisms in, metaphorically, the same way that Cray is willing to “feed on” the people of District 12 by taking advantage of hungry young girls for his own pleasure.
CRESSIDA
HUNGER GAMES PRODUCER/DIRECTOR TURNED REBEL FILMOGRAPHER
Cressida was a Trojan woman who allegedly fell in love with Troilus, the youngest son of King Priam, and pledged to him her everlasting devotion. However, when she was sent to the Greeks as part of a hostage exchange, she formed a liaison with the Greek warrior Diomedes, and is consequently most often depicted by writers as “false Cressida,” a paragon of female inconstancy as well as deception and betrayal. In the Hunger Games series, Cressida defects from the Capitol to District 13 and uses her knowledge of Panem’s government and mass media system to help the rebellion.
In addition, there is a species of carnivorous butterfly named Cressida cressida, which rather fits The Hunger Games’ Cressida—a Capitol butterfly outside but a government-toppling rebel inside!
CRESTA, Annie
DISTRICT 4 VICTOR WHO BECOMES FINNICK’S WIFE
Cresta most likely derives from crest, which is the top (or amplitude) of a wave—more symbolically, the part that rises from the sea. Given Annie’s victory in the Seventieth Games—she is the only tribute not to drown; literally the only one “to rise from the water”—the surname Cresta is a fit not only for Annie’s ocean-centric home district, District 4, but also her personal backstory.
Annie is a diminutive form of Anne, meaning gracious, merciful. Annie’s vote against a Capitol Hunger Games in Mockingjay, extending mercy to the children of the Capitol, may point to this etymology as the reason the name was chosen. And the fact that Annie’s name is one of the few diminutives in the Hunger Games universe is very telling, as it sets her on a younger/lower plane than the other victors. This could be indicative of the way she is used as bait for Finnick and why Mags would volunteer to take her place in the Quarter Quell. On the other hand, diminutives are commonly used to show familiarity and/or love, so that’s a positive attribute to her name.
DALTON
DISTRICT 10 REFUGEE TO DISTRICT 13 WHO SPECIALIZES IN GENETIC MANIPULATION
Dalton means from the valley town. He may be named for Sir Howard Dalton, a British geneticist who died in 2008—approximately during the writing of Mockingjay, in which the Hunger Games’ Dalton appears.
DARIUS
DISTRICT 12 PEACEKEEPER WHO BECOMES AN AVOX
Darius is etymologically Persian, and means he possesses or rich, kingly. However, the Darius of the Hunger Games most likely derives his name from the historical Roman Darius, who was a prefect of the praetorian Eastern Roman Empire. He presided during a major legal regime change but did not hold lawmaking power himself—just as Darius was a Peacekeeper in the time leading up to Panem’s own regime change, and had only limited power, as best exemplified by his beating, dismissal, and ultimate denouncement as a traitor when he attempts to stymie Gale’s whipping in Catching Fire.
DONNER, MAYSILEE
MADGE’S AUNT; DISTRICT 12 TRIBUTE IN THE FIFTIETH GAMES
Donner is a variation of Donar, the German name of the god Thor. In modern German, it means thunder.
In the United States/North America, the name is most commonly associated with the Donner Party, a group of American pioneers who set out for California in a wagon train in 1846. Delayed by a series of accidents and bad weather, and snowbound for months in the Sierra Nevadas, some of the emigrants resorted to cannibalism to survive. Maysilee Donner died shortly after deciding to split from Haymitch, with whom she had an alliance, in the Fiftieth Hunger Games; perhaps the name Donner, here, is intended to denote the departure from normal morality the Hunger Games represents or a break in interpersonal cooperation that leads to death.
Maysilee is a proprietary name of indeterminate origins.
EDDY
CHILD KILLED IN THE HOSPITAL FIREBOMBING OF DISTRICT 8
Eddy is a diminutive (a shortened form or nickname, but not derived from the traditional -ie affectionate format) form of any name beginning with Ed-. Edward means wealthy guardian, which is a p
oor match with Eddy’s role in the novels: inspiring Katniss to embrace her symbolic role as the Mockingjay. Edan, an Irish name, is a better match; it means a little fire. Edom, a Hebrew name meaning red, is another possibility.
ENOBARIA
DISTRICT 2 TRIBUTE IN THE QUARTER QUELL
Enobaria is most likely a female form of Enobarbus, the name of a character in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra. In the play, Enobarbus is considered a friend so loyal and so trusted by Antony that he is allowed to critique the government. In the context of the Hunger Games, this may just reflect Enobaria’s origins in District 2, which is considered the most loyal of the districts. But in the play, Enobarbus frequently serves as commentator on the action. He moves about freely, seeing much that occurs among the heads of state, and uses that information to form his own conclusions, which he shares with other characters as well as the audience.lxxxiv Enobaria’s filed teeth certainly serve as a comment on the Capitol’s bloodlust and infatuation with appearance.
Enobaria is one of the delicious characters in the Hunger Games whose background must be almost entirely extrapolated from the morsel of her name and few details that Katniss discloses, given that she does not play a major role in our first-person narrator’s life. Enobaria is described as a popular fixture of the Capitol and Hunger Games broadcasts and, if Enobarbus and his freedom to collect information and use it at will was, indeed, the inspiration for her name, she may well play the same role in the Capitol that Finnick does: a coerced slave who learned to trade personal favors for secrets.
EVERDEEN
When Suzanne Collins spoke with EW’s Shelf Life just before Mockingjay was released in August 2010, she talked a little about the origins of Katniss’ last namelxxxv:
I sort of half read Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge. It was assigned in 10th grade, and I just couldn’t get into it. About seven years later I rediscovered Hardy, and consumed four of his novels in a row. Katniss Everdeen owes her last name to Bathsheba Everdene, the lead character in Far From the Madding Crowd. The two are very different, but both struggle with knowing their hearts.
Everdeen is also an appropriate name for Katniss and her family in that it seems to be a portmanteau of evergreen and Dean.
An evergreen plant is one that has leaves in all seasons; like the Everdeens, it possesses the ability to survive and flourish despite harsh conditions. Like evergreens, which grow in the summer and are dormant in winter, Katniss and her family are renewed in the seasons between hardships. Between the Seventy-fourth Hunger Games and the Quarter Quell, Katniss begins to forgive her mother and the Everdeen women regain their closeness as a family; between Katniss’ second reaping and the war on the Capitol, Prim matures and comes into her own as an apprentice to Mrs. Everdeen.
Evergreen plants grow well in poor soil or on disturbed ground. The shelter provided by existing evergreen plants can make it easier for younger evergreen plants to survive cold and/or drought, much like the shelter Katniss provides for Prim. Owing to the botanical meaning, the term evergreen can refer metaphorically to something that is continuously renewed or is self-renewing, like Katniss’ resolve.
Dean means of the valley, which here is reflective of District 12’s location in the foothills of the Appalachians. Katniss herself is also, metaphorically, like a valley between two mountains: on one side, Gale—revenge—and on the other, Peeta—forgiveness and peace.
Katniss
Katniss, as she herself explains in the books, is a starchy, aquatic root vegetable also called sagittaria. This name comes from the Latin Sagittarius, meaning belonging to an arrow, and refers to the shape of the leaves. In our Katniss’ case, belonging to an arrow takes a more metaphorical meaning, one related to her proficiency with a bow and arrow. Katniss plants are found in canals, ponds, ditches, and slow rivers but are never abundant.
Given Collins’ love of Greek mythology, Katniss might also be an intentional partial homophone of Artemis, the virgin goddess of the hunt, who was considered a bird goddess and whose traditional symbol is a bow and arrow.
Katniss’ birthday is the only concrete date that we know in the series: May 8. In history, on May 8th:
• In 1450: Kentishmen revolted against King Henry VI in Jack Cade’s Rebellion in London.
• In 1794: French chemist Antoine Lavoisier, who was also a tax collector with the Ferme Générale, was tried, convicted as a traitor, and guillotined all on the same day in Paris during the Reign of Terror.
• In 1919: Edward George Honey proposed the idea of a moment of silence to commemorate the WWI Armistice in the United Kingdom in a letter to the London Evening News. Later, his idea was implemented in the United States as Memorial Day.
• In 1933: Mohandas Gandhi began a twenty-one-day fast in protest against British oppression in India.
• In 1941: The German Luftwaffe launched a bombing raid on Nottingham and Derby. A year later, also during WWII, the Battle of the Coral Sea ended while, elsewhere in the Pacific Theater, gunners of the Ceylon Garrison Artillery on Horsburgh Island in the Cocos Islands rebelled in the Cocos Islands Mutiny. Their mutiny was crushed and three of the soldiers were executed. Also on that day, in one of the final acts of the war in the African–European Theater, hundreds of Algerian civilians were killed by French Army soldiers in the Sétif massacre. The day also marked the end of the Prague Uprising.
• In 1973: The seventy-one-day standoff between federal authorities and the American Indian Movement members occupying the Pine Ridge Reservation at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, ended with the surrender of the militants.
Given the location of the Seam and its possible ethnic makeup, as well as the disparity between the rebels and the Capitol—and Suzanne Collins’ age and the events that would have shaped her social consciousness—it is very possible that Katniss’ birthday was intended to coincide with the end of Wounded Knee. However, the most likely reason that May 8th is Katniss’ birthday is that May 8th is also V-E Day, which marked the end of fighting in the European Theater in WWII.
Primrose
The primrose is a small, blooming flower that closes at night. In the language of flowers, it represents three ideals: I can’t live without you, early youth, and, for the evening primrose, impermanence, all of which are themes expressed through Prim and especially through her relationship with Katniss.
The language of flowers, also known as floriography, is a means of communication devised in the Victorian era that allowed coded messages to be sent through the arrangements of various flowers, permitting individuals to express feelings that otherwise could not be spoken—a system that would undoubtedly have been useful in Panem!
English primroses are actually one of the few endangered flower species, with sanctions imposed to prevent extinction through overpicking.
FLAVIUS
MEMBER OF KATNISS’ PREP TEAM
Flavius was the family name of an imperial dynasty in Rome whose members were popular with the common people, much as Katniss grows to be fond of her whole prep team (including Flavius himself) despite the vast differences between them in culture and socioeconomic class.
In Rome, the Flavians initiated economical and cultural reforms, such as lowering taxes on the plebian class and increasing the silver content of Rome’s coins, to bolster the Roman economy. A massive building program was enacted to celebrate the ascent of the Flavian dynasty, leaving multiple enduring landmarks in the city of Rome; the most spectacular of these was the Coliseum, which later housed the gladiatorial Games.
Although the Hunger Games’ Flavius does not participate in the bloodshed of the Games, he, like his Roman namesakes, does help make them visually extravagant.
FLICKERMAN, Caesar
Flickerman has a few possible derivations. The Flickerman is the name of a somewhat obscure internet/radio docudrama about a life under the lens—an idea that would be familiar to the tributes as well as Caesar Flickerman himself. The series’ themes also resonate with those in the Hunger
Games:
The Flickerman is a ground-breaking, cross-platform drama in which the dividing line between the real and the imagined is increasingly hard to distinguish. It unfolds through radio broadcasts, audio downloads, on line movies, blog entries and multiple internet channels.lxxxvi
Flicker is also a term for the visible fading displayed on video screens between broadcast cycles, as well as a slang term for remote control.
The most obvious reference point for Caesar’s first name is Julius Caesar, who was the figurehead of dictatorial Rome. Flickerman serves as a sort of figurehead for the Hunger Games, which serve as the epitome of the brutality of Snow’s dictatorial Capitol, but given that Flickerman himself is not presented as a dictator, it’s worth looking at other meanings of the name.
The original meaning of Caesar is unknown. The four most common derivations of the cognomen Caesar (a cognomen is a piece of Roman nomenclature similar to a last name) are given by the writer of the Historia Augusta). Two are applicable to the Hunger Games’ Caesar:
from caesaries, “hair”, because the founder of this branch of the family was born with a full head of hair. (Julius Caesar himself was balding in later life.) This is the etymology favored by Festus . . .
from caesius, an eye color variously translated today as “grey”, “blue-grey”, and even “blue” . . .lxxxvii
In Katniss’ first Hunger Games, Caesar Flickerman’s hair, lips, and eyes are all dyed pale blue.
FOXFACE
DISTRICT 5 TRIBUTE IN THE SEVENTY-FIFTH HUNGER GAMES