IMO, it's pretty obvious that it's to honor their memory. Same reason George named his son Fred.

I know that. It just sounds weird, since his children are named after his parents. I got the crazy idea that Rowling was hinting at incest. e__o

Forget I just typed that.

Phew.. never touched Harry Potter since I'm done with the last book. I'm pretty much already bored of it after the sixth book.

BTW, why does everyone seem to hate the epilogue so much? I don't care about it myself, but I'm curious...

I hate how it's such a boring Happily Ever After ending. It's not that I dislike happy endings, but the epilogue was so full of everyone getting married and having children that it was nauseating.

I actually prefer DH without the epilogue. It seems like Rowling was overdoing it.

Anyways, I don't mind them naming their kids after their parents... the name 'Albus' really bugged me though. >_< Makes me imagine the kid is... well, 'old'. >_<

The only thing that bugged me in the epilogue was the pairings.

It's just that the epilogue is completely unnecessary. We found out what happened to everybody else through JKR posting the info somewhere or another (i.e. George's kids, Luna's husband, etc.), so we don't need this boring little mini-chapter at the end to tell us.

@rena: I get honoring, but still to name your kid after so and so? That's taking it to obsessive levels almost. Probably just my upbringing (see taboo part) that finds it very unsettling to do that.

@agas: The epilogue seemed ... unnatural? i guess to me due to the pairings. Harry and ginny just appeared out of nowhere during book 6-7. Ron and Hermione I can see slightly but not to the extent of surviving marriage and kids since ron periodically angers hermione. I don't remember the rest of the pairings. Tack on the whole 'name taboo' I have, and there you go. It just felt tacky and unrealistic.

@rena: George's kids? Luna's husband? Where? @___@

@KTC: Well, he never did know his parents, if that helps. *shrug* People do it all the time, though.

@Agas: On the internet. There's a Harry Potter Wiki and stuff.

@rena: ppl do it all the time? huh, no one i know does that (as in adults that I know) O.o

as for the info: wait, she posted that before the epi? I thought she posted that stuff after the epilogue. She talked on a special that she had all these family trees planned out and what happened to the ppl. But that came after the book came out. Don't remember any place she was talking about it before epi.

...I never said it was before the epilogue.

than how is the epilogue (as bad as it is) completely unnecessary material concerning family trees and such? At the time, there was no public plans of releasing the information anywhere else so the epilogue was the best you had if you wanted to learn what happened to them.

Saying that its completely unnecessary because you can find the info from internet sources implies that the info was present before the epilogue was actually released.

Going by that logic (its useless because I can find it elsewhere), one can claim the entire harry potter series is useless material because one can simply find that info from outside sources aka wiki.

"At the time, there was no public plans of releasing the information anywhere else so the epilogue was the best you had if you wanted to learn what happened to them."
I don't actually know the dates that whatever other info was released was released on, but I'm assuming there were no "public plans" made for them either. (I believe the family tree was made available on JKR's site on Halloween 2007, though, so that's not terribly long after DH came out.)

"Saying that its completely unnecessary because you can find the info from internet sources implies that the info was present before the epilogue was actually released."
Well, it doesn't imply that to me.

Clearly I've gotten additional information from other places, and it's given me just as much satisfaction as finding it out in a crappy epilogue.

so you're saying you liked the info but not how it was written (epilogue vs outside sources)?

I really don't know where the Wiki got all the information about who George marries or his children. I never read about Victorie being Fleur and Bill's daughter in the book, either, though I guess it could be assumed so.
Since wikis are free to edit by anyone, shouldn't there be a chance that some of the information are just made up?

@theadept: that's always possible.

I am saying that I dislike the epilogue because it is not very well executed in my opinion and does not even have the added bonus of giving us information we would not have otherwise because we ended up getting that info and more from JKR in a different location.

There's a family tree up on JKR's site if you go through the old "Do Not Disturb" door. So unless the wiki people edited THAT in too... It has the marriages for all of the Weasley kids (and their children's names),

All in all, how do you rate HP series? 1-10?

I say 8

Overall: 6.5-7

A good read but lags and gets boring after ~5th one.

I have to agree with KTC on that one.

But still, it is well written. 7.5 for the series.