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If you swap letters "CH" and "TH" and remove the "a" from "Rachael Roth" you get the words "Rathel Roch" which according to wikitionary "Rathel" has two meanings it's related to "raddle" which is related "slovenly" which has a meaning as careless and "Roch" which has a very close terminology called "Rochle" which means "rough person".

Was the creators of the DC character Raven's name taken from these words as to describe her personality as "rough" and "careless"? Or was it just a random name picked randomly? How did the creators/writers of DC's Raven come up with the name "Rachael Roth"?

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  • Fundamentally, this comes down to the question of how they came up with Raven's civilian name, so I feel this falls shy of "too broad" despite asking three questions. That said, this interpretation seems more than a bit of a reach.
    – FuzzyBoots
    Commented May 16, 2019 at 11:12

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Your interpretation seems unlikely. The name, "Rachel Roth" (no 'a'), comes from the comics, Teen Titans [third series] #20 [2005] when she decides to enroll in high school. "Roth" was last name of her human mother, Angela Roth (albeit going by "Arella", which means the "The Messenger Angel" in Azarathian, until 2004 when her birth name was introduced). "Rachel" was likely picked because it sounds similar enough to "Raven" that it would not be difficult to remember to reply to.

I have found no indication that Marv Wolfman assigned any particular meaning to the name, other than that her taking up her mother's last name was likely in tribute to her.

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I haven't found any defintive answer to this question, but if it's a matter of meaning in the names, since a raven is a bird of ill omen, maybe Raven wanted a more confortable given name as a civilian (even if Raven is already a real human name). According to Wikipedia, Rachel means "ewe" (female sheep) in Hebrew, so the name has a meaning of innocence and purity :

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_(given_name)

Raven might have wanted to take distance from her demonic heritage and destined harbinger of doom, just like Superman prefers to be called Clark Kent instead of Kal-El.

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    Hi, welcome to SF&F. As you say, this a theory, but do you have any evidence it's correct? Answers should be more than just guesses; you might want to read How to Answer and take the tour.
    – DavidW
    Commented Oct 6, 2022 at 11:14

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