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In British slang, a "prang" is a minor motor vehicle collision.
According to the answer to the question What happens if Knight Bus is involved in a collision?, it's impossible for the Knight Bus, so Ernie's surname is a sort of an irony.
It's been said that Rowling took great care in the selection of character names, so there must be some sort of joke underlying this one. What did she have/could she have had in mind?
Probably
Ernie Prang and Stan Shunpike, the driver and conductor of the Knight Bus, were named after J. K. Rowling's grandfathers, Ernest Arthur Rowling and Stanley George Volant, respectively.1 Ernie's last name is a play on words, as "prang" is English slang meaning "to wreck an automobile". ernie prang
Sadly this info seems to be from a dead article on pottermore, looking for an actual interview to support.
- Ernest Arthur ROWLING was born on 9 July 1916 in Walthamstow, Essex, England and died about 1980 in Newport, Wales.
- Stanley George VOLANT was born on 23 June 1909 in St. Marylebone, London, England. rowling family
Shunpike -
a side road used to avoid the toll on or the speed and traffic of a superhighway shunpiker play -ˌpī-kər\ noun
Prang
(1) Originally to write off a car through crashing, the term developed in the U.K to mean (2) 'feeling' like a car wreck, specifically mental disassociation through drug (particularly crack, coke and skunk) over-use inducing severe fatigue, unsteadiness, derangement or paranoia. This has evolved to (3) signify any non-specific type of severe fatigue, unsteadiness or apprehension.
So we have both drivers with the names of her grandparents, and both lastnames obvious slang names for some driving related incident.
Thanks to Jason
The driver and conductor of the Knight Bus in ‘Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban’ are named after my two grandfathers, Ernest and Stanley.
