Concept and Creation
In a 2010 video interview with The Independent, Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket) said:
It may interest people to know that my sister…was always very good with kind of mechanical devices, where I was kind of hopeless and more of a reader, kind of like Klaus. And then I always think Sunny reminds me of all babies, because really all babies do is speak unintelligibly and eat things.
Snicket named the Baudelaires after French macabre poet Charles Baudelaire. The French surname Baudelaire (/ˌboʊdəˈlɛər/ in English), historically also recorded as Badelaire and Bazelaire, refers to a short sword or knife used as a heraldic blazon: Thomas Nugent, in his Pocket-Dictionary of the French and English Languages (1808), translated baudelaire as a "short, broad, and curved sword" used in heraldry; Thomas Dudley Fosbroke, in his Encyclopædia of Antiquities (1825), described the baudelaire as a "little portative knife" used as a medieval English blazon; W. T. Cosgrave described it as a "short and broad backsword, being towards the point like a Turkish scymitar." The French word baudelaire comes from Medieval Latin bādelārius, bādelāris, or bādārellus, meaning a "kind of short sword" (ensis brevis species).
Despite the apparently Romantic origin of "Baudelaire," Snicket stated in February 2007 that "the Baudelaires are Jewish! I guess we would not know for sure but we would strongly suspect it," citing their "manner" as an indicator. Snicket elaborated: "I think there is something naturally Jewish about unending misery. I'm Jewish so, by default, the characters I create are Jewish, I think."
Read more about this topic: Baudelaire Family
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