We just finished reading Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban, in which Professor Remus Lupin is discovered to be a werewolf. This led to a brief discussion of how the word "lupine" means "wolf-like." Claire, lover of words that she is, was thoroughly impressed. This morning, Don asked me whether Claire had told me what she'd figured out about Professor Lupin's name. I reminded him that we'd already talked about it, at which point Claire interrupted by saying, "Not his last name - his first name. It's Remus, like Remus and Romulus, the twins who were raised by a wolf."On the off chance that you're not totally up to speed on your Roman mythology, that would be the Remus and Romulus who were twin sons of the god Mars. You'll no doubt recall that a servant was instructed to murder them but was unable to do so, and instead sent them floating down the River Tiber in a basket. They were eventually found, and nursed, by a wolf.
For what it's worth, there is, apparently, a theory that the wolf was either a fox-goddess or a courtesan (both words apparently deriving from the Latin Lupa), and not actually a wolf at all. . . but I'm pretty sure Claire doesn't know about that debate. Probably because she hasn't discovered Wikipedia yet.
