Monday 1 December 2008

What was the Rabbits Name in Alice in Wonderland?


What was the Rabbits Name in Alice in Wonderland? Have you ever wondered that? No, neither have I but, apparently, thousands of people everyday ask Google to name the rabbit in Alice in Wonderland. Why?
Few seem interested in knowing the name of the Mouse or Dormouse or the Dodo or the Mad Hatter or the Cheshire Cat or the March Hare
Lewis Carroll is documented as being very interested in logic so it isn't by chance that he gave none of the characters in Wonderland a proper forename...except the Rabbit's housemaid...Mary Ann.. but he did name the characters from the real World...Alice of course and her cat Dinah but not Alice's sister. Wence logical?
So how did it come to be written?
En route to a picnic, 10-year-old Alice Liddell asked Charles Dodgson, a family friend (pen name, Lewis Carroll) to entertain her and her sisters, with a story. Dodgson spoke of a girl, named Alice, and her adventures after she fell into a rabbit hole. The story had been told to the sisters before, but this time Alice asked Dodgson to write it down for her. He promised and he did, calling it Alice's Adventures Under Ground
After another set of children loved it, Dodgson sought a publisher. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was published in 1865 and a second book, Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, followed in 1871.
So what could the Rabbits name in Alice in Wonderland be? Well, per a pet name website, great names for a white rabbit are Alaska, Arctic, Blanca, Blanche, Blanco, Casper, Chalkie, Coconut, Cotton, Elmer, Frosty, Glacier, Ice, Icy, Ivory, Snow, Snow White, Snowball, Snowy, Sugar, Vanilla, Winter and Yukon

Charles Dodgson translated his name into Latin to come up with Lewis Carroll. The Latin for white rabbit is niveus lepus and the latin for late arriving is tardus adventum so you decide on a name, if, that is, you're still interested. Personally, I'm not

Of course the rabbit did have a name because on his door was a brass plate with the name `W. RABBIT' engraved upon it. I'm only guessing mind but I think the W. stood for White
So why did I write this? Because thousands of people, every day, pose the question 'What was the rabbits name in Alice in Wonderland' and I'm just as capable as anyone else to give them the answer; indeed better than most because most fail to answer it at all

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