He Who Must Not Be Named

These days, most popularly recognized as Lord Voldemort from the HarryPotter series.

Long before Harry Potter, however, HpLovecraft used the phrase as a title for "Hastur", one of the nasty things in the Cthulhu mythology. Anyone who uttered his name would have their brains sucked out through small holes in their skull by Hastur himself. Lovecraft got the name "Hastur" from Robert Chambers, who in turn got it from Ambrose Bierce.

Some stories have it that the name must be said three times, giving rise to the DungeonsAndDragons joke about things you don't want your apprentice wizard to say:

: Master, I was cleaning your desk and found some letters to some guy named Hastur. I'll mail them for you but I need Hastur's address. On second thought, they look kind of old, are you still in touch with Hastur or .....whaaaa!!!

Version of the old proverb "speak of the devil and he appears" -- AndrewCates

[Perhaps also an indirect reference to the ancient Jewish tradition that the deity of their worship could not and should not be named. The closest they came was an abbreviation (YHWH), and even that could only be uttered once per year by the high priests in the innermost sanctum of the temple.]

Hebrews wrote everything like that, and the idea that all their words stood for something is highly doubtful. It's called "not having vowels in your alphabet".

You must also remember that this was a tradition of the Pharisees, the very ones who plotted Jesus's murder. There is no mention of any law in the Hebrew-Amamaic scriptures forbidding the direct mention of his name. Then, if you read the account at Mattew 15, Jesus (whose name is derived by similar means - the written Hebrew language of that time had no vowels) reproved the Pharisees for following their traditions rather that the written law. I encourage anyone reading this to go to the following link: http://www.watchtower.org/e/na/article_05.htm.

-- Anonymous

Shall we spare them the LifeOfBrian quote? no

: Look. I'd had a lovely supper, and all I said to my wife was, "That piece of halibut was good enough for Jehovah."

Most recently used on this Wiki to refer to Fark.com, that keeps deleting and generally fouling the nests of people trying to use this Wiki. An unpleasant something. Surely we all see the truth in this?

More important than those who must not be named, is he who cannot be named.

What? The artist formerly known as Prince?!?

Prince Rogers Nelson (his birth name) for a time could not refer to himself as Prince because of some contract problems with his record label. So he adopted the "artist formerly known" as a way of thumbing his nose at the label until his contract expired and he could once again refer to himself by his customary stage name.

I wonder if that's where they got the idea for BeatleJuice??