Because I'm petty, I'm going to gather you all around and tell you about that time JK Rowling was extremely wrong about something and, by being wrong about it, poisoned Google search results for it for years afterwards and generally made the world ignorant about it

We all know that the spell names in Harry Potter are bad

Because JK Rowling doesn't actually know any Latin and doesn't look it up, even when she was getting million-dollar advances to look it up

So you get stuff like "Imperio!" ("To the empire!")

But I'm not talking about that, or about how JKR thinks "Enervate" means the opposite of "Stupefy" when in fact it means the same thing

No, I'm talking about one of the most obnoxious acts of appropriation in the series since the very beginning

The Unlocking Charm, "Alohomora"

If you look up "Alohomora" on Google you will find endless repetition after repetition of a variant on this paragraph:

"Alohomora is derived from the West African Sidiki dialect used in geomancy, meaning 'Friendly to thieves'"

It is an extremely widespread factoid thanks to JKR

It comes from her lawsuit against Steve Vander Ark for publishing the Harry Potter Lexicon, which is an entirely different topic (but also makes her out to be a pretty big asshole)

But anyway

It's completely wrong, and it's actually staggeringly offensive how wrong it is

There is no such thing as the "West African Sidiki dialect"

"Sidiki" isn't even the right word, it's her misspelling of Sikidi or Sikidy -- she switched the K and the D

And, okay, whatever, people fuck that up sometimes, it's not that big a deal

But Sikidy is not a "West African dialect"

Sikidy is the name of a form of divination performed by throwing acacia seeds to the ground and seeing the pattern they make, just as the I Ching is based on throwing sticks

"Sikidy" here is a synonym for "geomancy"

The "West African dialect", the language, is *Malagasy*

It's extremely sloppy and obnoxious to confuse the two, like if I said "Aquarius is a word from the Mediterranean European dialect of Zodiac"

Only I spelled it "Zociad"

But even that, in and of itself, is not the most embarrassing thing

The most embarrassing thing is "Alohomora" does not mean "favorable to thieves"

"Alohomora" is one of the sixteen signs of Sikidy, it's just derived from the Arabic "al-humra", "the red one" (like "Alhambra"

What happened is JKR saw a chart of the 16 signs of Sikidy and noticed that *part of the description of Alohomora* says that it's "favorable to thieves"

And then she went and decided that's literally what the word *meant*

https://www.serenapowers.com/sikidy.html 

That's... ridiculously embarrassing

Like it's such a dumb dilettante mistake to make

And she's immortalized it as part of her extremely popular children's books and now kids all over the world are repeating her stupid misconception

Like imagine if I looked over a chart of the Western Zodiac and fixated on one bizarre random thing -- "Pisces are especially known for their love of music"

And then I went and made my wizard book where the Pisces Potion specifically gave you the ability to play the guitar

And when I was asked what the origin of the Pisces Potion was I totally misremembered the details and just said "Well, in the Northern European dialect of Zociad, the word Pisces means 'good at music'"

And then all the Asian people in the world thought that's what it meant

It's just a huge pile of Wrong in one single Fun Fact from the Harry Potter-verse

Misremembering Madagascar as being in "West Africa"
Confusing the Malagasy language with the divination practice of Sikidy
Misspelling Sikidy "Sidiki"
And then thinking one aspect of the sign was the sign's whole meaning

It's just... really fucking lazy and disrespectful

It would not be a big deal -- it would be depressingly par for the course -- if it were just some random fantasy book

But of course it's a big deal now because the books became a big deal

And she never raised her standards

This is the same shitty level of research she put into bloviating about skinwalkers in Navajo culture or naga in Hindu culture

Hell, it's the same shitty level of research she put into talking about boggarts and brownies and other elements of *English* culture

This is what I mean when I say she's not just a bad writer and a bigoted person but profoundly lazy

Her worldview is shaped by this amazingly self-confident willingness to just glance at something once or twice and be sure she understands as much of it as she needs to

Was there ever any need to go back and look up what "Alohomora" meant? Nah

Was there ever any worry that someone from the culture she was shamelessly lifting from might be offended or take issue with her? Nah

Just plow on ahead, Jo, let your imagination be your compass

Go ahead and name that girl "Cho Chang"

Who the fuck cares

It sounds like a name to you and that's all that matters