Harry Potter: Why Saying Voldemort's Name Is Forbidden In The Wizarding World

Don't cross the streams, never feed a Gremlin after midnight, and whatever you do, never say the Dark Lord of the Wizarding World's name out loud. The latter is a staple of "Harry Potter" fandom and is laced with so much dread that even the alternatives bring the chills. "You-Know-Who" or "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named" are lengthy aliases that, at one point, could still silence a room. There was a point in the Potter timeline, however, when saying (whispers) Voldemort could actually get you killed, thanks to a magic spell cast by the light-bulb head-looking tyrant himself.

In "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," the final chapter in the entire "Harry Potter" timeline, it's revealed that Voldemort has placed a Taboo spell on his own name to track whoever said it. After regaining his following and sending members of the Order of the Phoenix into hiding, the Taboo gave him a sneaky means of tracing his enemies and the potential location of their allies. At that time, those who posed the greatest threat to Voldemort were the only ones who dared say his name out loud, which provided an immediate chance of taking the fight to them and breaking down their numbers. Now, as evil, excessively cunning plans go, it's not a bad idea to turn your name into a siren for those you're trying to capture and/or kill. But as some fans on Reddit have pointed out, there was a way that this nifty curse could've been turned back on He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named in the best way possible.

Through the magic of the internet, a fan over on r/HarryPotter may have poked a wand hole in Voldemort's Taboo incantation that Harry and his friends in the Order of the Phoenix may have been too busy to notice. "Why didn't the Order use the fact that Voldemort's name was Taboo to THEIR advantage?" asked u/masark4417. "Like they could've had some powerful Order wizards with their wands at the ready and said 'Voldemort' and baited Death Eaters and Snatchers into Apparating near them and killed them before they even realized what the f*** was going on."

It was a question that other Potter fans had also thought about over the years, with u/Crazy_Cauliflower_74 adding, "I never understood why they didn't just call him Tom [Riddle, Voldemort's birth name], would have avoided the Taboo and p***** him off at the same time." With that said, one Reddit fan was quick to argue the point, saying that time was of the essence with this spell, and it took some time for our heroes to figure out what was going on. "I suppose the Taboo was supposed to be a secret and the Order figured it quite late (remember Lupin didn't know how the Death Eaters tracked Harry in London)," they wrote. "By the time they figured it out, the Order was — to put it in Aberforth's words — done' while the Death Eaters had the entire ministry." Of course, by the end of it all, there wasn't much to Voldemort's name, or Voldemort at all. Good job, Harry.