[grellis]

Great dissection of the words! One of the guys who was at the midnight release pointed out that "Alohamora" is derived from two Italian words, which would probably mean their roots are Latin, but that I'm not too sure about--port, or variations of such, are more common for the word "door." Now that I think about it, the guy might have just liked hearing his own voice, to which I can relate. I like my voices.

I think it would be great if Rowling included a primer, of sorts, with book 7, explaining the derivation of the various spells and names. Kind of like the appendices of LOTR.

[exnavychick]

I like my voices.

LOL! You and me both. :) I think a primer of the spells would be awesome. I'm sure it would be interesting, at a minimum.

[discostu]

Mugglenet has a lot of that already
http://www.mugglenet.com/infosection/spells/spells.shtml

Of course it's all unofficial and therefore might or might not reflect what Rowling was thinking and how she got the words, but it's interesting all the same.

[kellynch]

I think it would be great if Rowling included a primer, of sorts, with book 7, explaining the derivation of the various spells and names. Kind of like the appendices of LOTR.

Check out this site. It has derivations of a lot of the names Rowling uses. One caveat however is that the definitions may come from the site's users. The listing for Mrs. Norris says:

According to Kate C., Mrs. Norris was named after a nosy preacher's wife in Jane Austen's Mansfield Park.

While this definition happens to be true (although it does not go far enough in describing how horrible a person Austen's Mrs. Norris was), the fact that it comes from a reader we don't know doesn't guarantee its accuracy.

The site does say that my thinking that Malfoy means "bad faith" is what Rowling herself had in mind when she named this particular family. *pats self on back*