How did Avada Kedavra get its name?

Question

How did Avada Kedavra, the Unforgivable Killing Curse, get its name? Most spells' incantations sound similar to their effect, with their names influenced from Latin.

However, Avada Kedavra, influenced by 'Abra Cadabra', sounds more like a silly phrase a magician in a kids' birthday party would say before pulling a rabbit out of a top hat, not much like a wizard about to commit murder.

Also, unlike the rest, influenced by Latin, Abra Cadabra is actually in Hebrew, which means "I will create as I speak".

Just to clarify are you looking for your answer in universe? — TheLethalCarrot, Jun 13 '19 at 08:43
Are you asking why JK Rowling named the curse Avada Kedavra or why the character's in universe came up with that name for the incantation? — TheLethalCarrot, Jun 13 '19 at 08:48
@MorZamir No, in many cases it's absolutely not the same. See What does "in-universe" mean? — Rand al'Thor, Jun 13 '19 at 11:18
As an example of in-universe vs author intent: plainly the author intended it to sound like "abracadabra". But in the world of the novels -- a world where wizards exist but are secret -- we could make the argument that muggles say "abracadabra" at kids birthday parties because it has been passed down in old folk tales about real wizards, and the sounds have gradually shifted as the tales were re-told. That argument is not made in the books, but it is a sensible in-universe explanation of the similarity. — Eric Lippert, Jun 13 '19 at 18:04
(And it actually would be a pretty good argument as "B" and "V" sounds often swap with each other in the evolution of real-world languages.) — Eric Lippert, Jun 13 '19 at 18:06
+1 just because even though I speak Hebrew and can read Aramaic, I never noticed that "Abra Cadabra" is derived from "ay-brah c'dee-(b/v)rah". — arp, Jun 14 '19 at 00:54
They aren't all influenced by latin, though most of them are. Alohomora is a weird hybrid of Hawaiian aloha (which means either hello or goodbye, the latter in this case) and Latin mora (which means "delay" or "hindrance"). And the spell Point Me is just plain English. — Hearth, Jun 14 '19 at 17:01
@Hearth Where did you hear "Alohomora" was derived from those two words? — Azor Ahai -him-, Jun 14 '19 at 17:22
@AzorAhai I don't remember, it was quite a long time ago. Though I've seen others mention it, so I don't think it's something I just made up. — Hearth, Jun 14 '19 at 17:28
I always figured it was from 'advance cadaver' i.e. move death forward in time, and sounds like abracadabra. — , Sep 05 '23 at 00:18

score 69 · Accepted Answer · edited Aug 17 '20 at 10:57

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J.K. Rowling answered in an interview why she used Avada Kedavra as the incantation for the killing curse. She answered that "It is an ancient spell in Aramaic which means “let the thing be destroyed”." so it is sort of the other way around to your interpretation regarding abracadabra.

There is a lot of Latin in the spells in your books Do you speak Latin?

Yes. At home, we converse in Latin. [Laughter]. Mainly. For light relief, we do a little Greek. My Latin is patchy, to say the least, but that doesn’t really matter because old spells are often in cod Latin—a funny mixture of weird languages creeps into spells. That is how I use it. Occasionally you will stumble across something in my Latin that is, almost accidentally, grammatically correct, but that is a rarity. In my defence, the Latin is deliberately odd. Perfect Latin is not a very magical medium, is it? Does anyone know where avada kedavra came from? It is an ancient spell in Aramaic, and it is the original of abracadabra, which means “let the thing be destroyed”. Originally, it was used to cure illness and the “thing” was the illness, but I decided to make it the “thing” as in the person standing in front of me. I take a lot of liberties with things like that. I twist them round and make them mine.

_{J.K.Rowling Official Site, Sunday 15 August 2004, J K Rowling at the Edinburgh Book Festival (Archived)}

edited Aug 17 '20 at 10:57

Richard Hare

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answered Jun 13 '19 at 08:53

TheLethalCarrot

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I was immediately skeptical of Rowling's claim here, and she is in fact wrong. http://aramaicnt.org/2014/01/29/abracadabra-is-not-aramaic/ Or, see Wikitionary: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/abracadabra Looks like Rowling isn't just bad at math, but etymology too. :) – Shamshiel Jun 13 '19 at 09:56
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I also investigate a bit. It might sound right since Hebrew is influenced also by Aramaic, but it does not say what she claims. I would have downvoted Rowling if I could. – Mor Zamir Jun 13 '19 at 10:01
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@Shamshiel To be fair, her mistake is pretty excusable, since it seems like a relatively common misconception. My guess is that accuracy wasn't really the goal for her when wiring the story. It's a bit like asking her about dragon anatomy, and then blaming her for confusing the tibia and the femur. – Misha R Jun 13 '19 at 13:28
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+1 because even though she might be wrong about the root word, it seems pretty clear that it's where she got the name of her spell. – PlutoThePlanet Jun 13 '19 at 16:02
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@Shamshiel The wiktionary link says that some believe the Latin term abracadabra comes from the Aramaic "avda kedavara", which seems pretty close to what she's saying. Where she seems to be wrong is in the meaning: it means "what was said has been done." Nothing about destroying anything, diseases or otherwise. – trlkly Jun 13 '19 at 18:33
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I always wondered if she swapped the Bs to Vs so that the "kedavra" part could also be a pun on "cadaver". – anaximander Jun 13 '19 at 19:33
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@trikly: Shamshiel's first link covers that. J.K. Rowling's statement accurately reflects a claim in a 1977 book -- including the phrase's meaning -- but the claim in that 1977 book is not plausible. (Keep in mind, by the way, that in Aramaic -- just as in English -- similar words can mean very different things. Since there's no real original Aramaic phrase, it's hardly less reasonable to interpret the avda as "let be destroyed" (from the root ʔ-b-d, with a glottal stop) than as "has been done" (from the root ʕ-b-d, with a voiced pharyngeal approximant).) – ruakh Jun 13 '19 at 23:43
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@Shamshiel: From wiktionary: Relationships have been suggested with [..] various Aramaic [..] terms (עַבְדָא כְּדַברָא‎ (avda kedavara, literally “what was said has been done”); [..] but there is little supporting evidence. Little supporting evidence or not, Rowling does not need to justify the source of her inspiration with hard evidence. Her answer about where the inspiration comes from is not wrong. (Similarly, even if Caesar wasn't born via cesarean section, that does not automatically mean that cesarean sections weren't named after Caesar. That's not a logical inevitability). – Flater Jun 14 '19 at 08:40
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@ba: Just because it's not actually Aramaic doesn't mean that Rowling didn't learn of the saying from a claim that it is Aramaic. Rowling is answering where she got the inspiration from, not whether the source of the inspiration ended up being right or wrong after all. Even if it turns out that the Aramaic claim was willfully fabricated and a hoax, does not change how Rowling found the phrase. – Flater Jun 14 '19 at 08:44
@Flater: This seems excessively parsimonious. Yes, Rowling correctly (as far as we know) stated where she got her inspiration from, which was a false folk etymology of abracadabra that would have set off alarm bells if she had even a slight familiarity with the words and languages involved. (I don't know Aramaic, but I've seen it, and it sounded like total BS.) Also, FWIW, Pliny the Elder suggested the connection went the other way: Julius Caesar was called Caesar because an ancestor had a Caesarean. :) – Shamshiel Jun 14 '19 at 10:22
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@Shamshiel: Not sure what's parsimonious about it. What I find more parsimonious is the dismissal of everything someone says because some part of it later appears to have been a misconception. If Rowling was arguing an academical linguistics, I'd agree with you. But the context of the answer she gave completely invalidates the need for this level of correctness and how much is invalidated due to something being incorrect. – Flater Jun 14 '19 at 10:35
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I think some of the comments should be incorporated into the answer, namely that 1. the whole Aramaic claim is false, but 2. the claim itself does exist and Rowling is accurately relaying it, apparently unaware it is false. I think SE answers should try to avoid spreading misinformation wherever possible, and even though Rowling’s quotation is certainly accurate, she is misinformed and that deserves a note. (To be clear, I have upvoted either way, I just think this would make a good answer better.) – KRyan Jun 14 '19 at 12:23
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the phonetic similarities of "avada" to fr. "vide" (empty), with an imperative prefix, and "kedavra" to cadaver had me create a mental image of a body bereft of its spirit, when I first read it in the novels, which seemed to make sense. I'm aware that this is due to the mix of languages I'm familiar with, and probably nonsense. – dlatikay Jun 14 '19 at 20:00
@diatikay and I don't think it'd be the first time that an author came up with a name for something that way, and then later invented another origin to try and sound smarter... – Paul Sep 11 '19 at 17:18

score -1 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 04 '23 at 21:10

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The word cadaver is another word for corpse with a slight change of spelling for the spell. The death spell creating a new corpse…

answered Sep 04 '23 at 21:10

English professor

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Hi, welcome to SF&F. Do you have any evidence for this theory? Please note the evidence will need to be extremely good to contradict the author's own words. – DavidW Sep 04 '23 at 21:18

How did Avada Kedavra get its name?

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