Did Voldemort know what his name meant?

Question

In French Voldemort means "flight from death". Was Voldemort aware of that fact when he created it?

Answer 1

Quite possibly, although this (important) fact is not mentionned at all in the books. In french, Voldemort could either mean "Flight of Death" or "Theft of/from Death". Because of its sinister invocation, the former is usually the one that is mentionned, however the second make much more sense because it can be considered as a direct reference to the search of immortality/invincibility by Tom Riddle and his subsequent creation of the horcruxes. By creating the horcruxes and therefore becoming invincible, Tom Riddle has effectively been able of cheating Death itself or, in other words, to steal (his soul) from it; hence his new name.

As the process of the creation of this new name is not mentionned anywhere in the books, it's possible that for Tom Riddle, it was just a collection of letters chosen at random. However, this makes no sense. Why would he have chosen a name based on a bunch of letters with no signification whatsoever to him? Especially considering the fact that his name was of sufficient importance to him so that he took steps to change it because he didn't like the old one? If you find it sufficiently important to change your name, you don't simply choose a new one at random by putting together a bunch of letters chosen at random.

Finally, even if the second hypothesis makes a little more sense, not only the first one ("Flight of Death") could also be true but it's even possible that both are true; ie, that Tom Riddle has chosen this name because of its dual signification: both as sinister invocation of his presence and as a reference to his reach of immortality.

Also, as a side note, when JRK say that she has invented the name Voldemort, she doesn't mean that this is simply a collection of letters chosen at random; she means that this is not a real name; taken from a phone book for example.

Answer 2

No he did not know what his name meant. We can possibly say this for sure, because even JKR didn't know what they name meant.

Also, he created his name by mixing up letters and such, so that makes it pretty obvious he didn't know at first at least.

However, he might of done research or some Death Eater might have told him and then he might of known that his name also meant something else.

From this source

Part 3 {5:05} Lydon: What about names themselves? Muggles, to begin, but the whole catalogue of - er - wizards: Albus Dumbledore, Voldemort - er - Hagrid.

JKR: I'm big on names - I like names, generally. You have to be really careful giving me your name if it's an unusual one, because you will turn up in book six. Erm - I - I collect - some of them are invented; Voldemort is an invented name, Malfoy is an invented name, Quidditch is invented, erm -

So Voldemort is a made up name. But since it could be something JKR remembered from a French Class she took.

but I also collect them, from all kinds of places: maps, street names, people I meet, old books, old saints, erm - Mrs Norris, people will have recognised, comes from Jane Austen. Erm - Dumbledore is an old English word meaning bumblebee. Because Albus Dumbledore is very fond of music, I always imagined him as sort of humming to himself a lot.

So maybe she remembered that name and thought that she made it up. But she she said she made it up, so he probably didn't know. IDK if he even would have liked being called someone who had made a flight from death(or thief), Voldemort might have took that to mean weakness.

Closely related to this Question:

Why did Tom Riddle change his name to Voldemort?

Although I think these are to very different questions, most of the answers are in the above Question.