As of April 26, 2005, this index contains books #1-#8, and the Unauthorized Autobiography.
| Anderson, Charlie | A patient in Heimlich Hospital who has injured himself in an accident. Named after a character in the John Dos Passos novel The Big Money. | |
| Anwhistle, Josephine | Her husband’s name was Ike. If you say his name, Ike Anwhistle, you can hear yourself say I can whistle. Ike, like the Baudelaire’s mom, could whistle with crackers in his mouth. | |
| Anxious Clown Restaurant | Anxious means of course worried, and clowns actually make a lot of people nervous. |
| Bass, Mrs. | Klaus’s teacher at Prufrock Prep. A bass is a fish. (See Remora, Mr.) | |
| Baudelaire (Violet, Klaus & Sunny) | Charles Baudelaire was a poet of the late 19th century in France. His behavior was not the best, especially later in his life. In the 20th century, there was a tawdry trial involving a wealthy socialite named Sunny von Bulow and her second husband Claus. | |
| Beatrice | The great love of Lemony Snicket's life. The great Italian poet Dante loved a woman named Beatrice and made her the centerpiece of several of his works, including the immortal Divine Comedy. It is Beatrice who greets Dante in Paradise after he has traveled through Hell and Purgatory. | |
| Blattberg, Julie | In the Autobiography, the woman who may or may not be Lemony's aunt. Julie Blattberg is actually a photographer. Heaven knows if she actually contributed photographs to the book. | |
| Bovary, Emma | A patient in Heimlich Hospital suffering from food poisoning. In Gustave Flaubert’s novel of the same name, Emma Bovary poisons herself after leading a fairly tawdry life. | |
| Briny Beach | Briny means salty. Sea water is also called brine. Even though a beach is of course by the sea, briny usually means unpleasantly salty. |
| Daily Punctilio | The terrible newspaper that often reports on the Baudelaires as if they were criminals. Punctilio means strictness in conduct. | |
| Dalloway, Clarissa | A patient in Heimlich Hospital who doesn’t seem to have anything wrong with her. In Virginia Woolfe’s novel Mrs. Dalloway, Clarissa is moderately depressed without knowing exactly why. | |
| Damocles Dock | The landing on Lake Lachrymose where the Baudelaires arrived to live with their Aunt Josephine in The Wide Window. Damocles was a man who lived at the court of a very rich ruler, whom he constantly flattered. The ruler got tired of Damocles’ blather and asked him if he would like to trade places with him. Of course Damocles said yes and soon found himself at the head of a banquet table. He was really enjoying himself until he looked up and saw a sword hanging directly over his head, hanging on a horse hair. “That,” said the rich man, “is what being a ruler is really like.” | |
| Doldrum Drive | The doldrums is an area in the Atlantic where the wind usually doesn’t blow, leaving sailing ships stranded. | |
| Dupin, Detective | Count Olaf’s disguise in The Vile Village. Pronounced as English, it sounds like duping. To dupe someone is to fool them. However, Inspector Dupin was the hero of the first detective stories ever written, by Edgar Allan Poe. |
Embarrassingly, there are no E's at this time. |
| Fagin, Mr. | A nineteenth cousin of the Baudelaires who turns down Mr. Poe’s request to be their guardian in The Vile Village. Fagin was a master thief in Charles Dickens’ novel Oliver Twist and was just as despicable as Count Olaf. He meets his end through Oliver, who is an orphan like the Baudelaires. | |
| Fickle Fountain | Fickle means unreliable, and the fountain in The Bad Beginning is described as “an elaborately carved monument that occasionally spat out water.” There is also a Fickle Ferry in The Wide Window. | |
| Finite Forest | Finite means having an end. | |
| Flacutono, Foreman | The disguise of the bald henchman in The Miserable Mill. Flacutono can be rearranged to spell Count Olaf. Flacutono shows up again in The Hostile Hospital, along with his associates Dr. O. Lucafont, Dr. Tocuna and Nurse Flo. | |
| Funcoot, Al | The supposed playwright of The Marvelous Marriage in The Bad Beginning. His last name sounds sort of like a very rude saying that we will not discuss here, but the main point is that the letters in Al Funcoot can be rearranged to spell Count Olaf. |
| Genghis, Coach | Count Olaf’s disguise in The Austere Academy. Genghis Khan was the leader of the Mongols, who slaughtered their way across Asia. | |
| Grim River | A river on the way to Uncle Monty’s house in The Reptile Room. Grim means stern or forbidding. | |
| Gustav | Uncle Monty’s old assistant, who was killed by Count Olaf in the Swarthy Swamp. The most famous Gustav is Gustav Mahler, a famous composer of the early 20th century. |
| Hazy Harbor | On the way to Uncle Monty’s house in The Reptile Room, you pass Hazy Harbor. Hazy means not very clear, and is often used to describe hot, wet days. | |
| Hector | The man in The Vile Village with whom the Baudelaires lived. In Greek mythology, Hector was the leader of the army of Troy. He was very brave and warlike, but not a very nice person. | |
| Heimlich Hospital | Dr. Henry Heimlich invented the Heimlich Maneuver, which you would use to help a person who is choking on a piece of food. As an added bonus, heimlich is German for secret. |
| Incredibly, there are no I's at this time. |
| Jarringly, there are no J's at this time. |
| Klaus Baudelaire | see Baudelaire |
| Lake Lachrymose | The lake under Aunt Josephine’s house. Lachrymose means tearful. | |
| Lousy Lane | The road that leads to Uncle Monty’s house in The Reptile Room. Lousy originally meant full of lice, little bloodsucking bugs that live in dirty places and on dirty people. Now it means totally repulsive. | |
| Lucafont, Dr. O. | The name that one of Count Olaf’s henchmen assumes when he comes to Uncle Monty’s house after the unfortunate herpetologist was murdered. O. Lucafont can be rearranged to spell Count Olaf. Dr. Lucafont shows up again in The Hostile Hospital. | |
| Luciana, Officer | Esmé Squalor’s disguise in The Vile Village. |
| Mapple, Jonah | A patient in Heimlich Hospital who is seasick. In Herman Melville’s novel Moby Dick, a famous preacher named Mapple preaches a sermon about Jonah and the whale. | |
| Montgomery, Montgomery | Uncle Monty's full name. What it means is still a guess. |
| Nero, Vice Principal | Nero was one of the early emperors of Rome. He had many character flaws, but chiefly he’s known as the one who “fiddled while Rome burned,” and Vice Principal Nero certainly does that. | |
| Nevermore Tree | Where the crows in The Vile Village roost at night. The spooky talking crow in Edgar Allan Poe’s poem, “The Raven,” only knew one word: “Nevermore.” |
| Olaf, Count | At the moment, there's no real reason for him to be named Olaf. | |
| “Orlando!” | In The Hostile Hospital, Sunny says this to indicate one of Olaf’s henchmen, “the one who looks like neither a man nor a woman.” Every now and then, Sunny’s nonsense actually means something, and this time, it refers to Orlando, a novel by Virginia Woolfe, whose hero lives many hundreds of years and changes from a man to a woman halfway through. We could do a whole website on Sunny's sayings. | |
| Orwell, Georgina | The optometrist in The Miserable Mill. Another of Snicket’s literary references: George Orwell wrote dark political novels in which freedom is routinely quashed. |
| Paltryville | Paltry means little, insignificant, puny. | |
| Patton, Charley | An Adjunct Professor at the Scriabin Institute for Accuracy in Music, to whom Lemony Snicket writes a letter in the Autobiography. Charley Patton was actually a blues singer from Mississippi who was born in 1891. | |
| Poe, Mr. | Edgar Allan Poe was of course the American master of horror fiction. His most famous poem was “The Raven.” His name is synonymous with dark and gloomy. Mr. Poe has a son named Edgar. | |
| Prospero | The ship that was supposed to take the Baudelaires and Uncle Monty to Peru. Prospero was the magician in the play The Tempest, by William Shakespeare, who ruled an island in the Bermudas. | |
| Prufrock Preparatory School | Prufrock is the name of the narrator of a long and very depressing poem by T. S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," in which he worries about being scared of life and of death. Prufrock Prep’s motto is Memento mori, which is Latin for Remember you will die, so exactly what the school is preparing its students for (with its tombstone-shaped buildings) is a good question. |
| Quagmire (Duncan, Isadora, Quigley) | A quagmire is a swamp, one that you get trapped in and cannot get out of. Isadora Duncan was a famous and scandalous dancer of the early 20th century. Ask your parents. |
| Remora, Mr. | Violet’s teacher at Prufrock Prep. A remora is a fish that attaches itself to a shark with a sucker on the back of its head and feeds itself with bits of food that fall out of the shark’s mouth. | |
| Rieux, Bernard | A patient in Heimlich Hospital with a nasty hacking cough. In Albert Camus’s The Plague, Bernard Rieux is the doctor who tries to warn everybody about the plague. |
| Salmonella | see Café Salmonella | |
| Scriabin Institute for Accuracy in Music | Alexander Scriabin was a Russian composer whose vivid and evocative music is usually not thought of as "accurate." | |
| Sebald, Dr. | A filmmaker and author of VFD's Sebald Code. WG "Max" Sebald was a German author whose gloomy novels were autobiographical in intent if not in detail. | |
| Sham, Captain | Count Olaf’s disguise in The Wide Window. Sham means fake. | |
| Snicket, Jacques | Lemony’s brother, who is killed in The Vile Village. Just curious, does one pronounce his last name “snick-AY” to go with his French first name? | |
| Spats, Carmelita | A spat is an argument, usually a little nasty fight. Also, spats are the white covers that men used to wear over their shoes. | |
| Squalor, Esmé | Author J. D. Salinger wrote a book of short stories entitled For Esmé: With Love and Squalor. Squalor means disgusting filth. Esmé can be Pig Latin for mess: ess-may. The J in Salinger's name stands for Jerome, which is the name of Esmé's husband. | |
| Stephano | The name used by Count Olaf when he poses as Uncle Monty’s assistant in The Reptile Room. Stephano was a character in the play The Tempest by William Shakespeare. He and his friend Trinculo were drunkards and at one point plot to murder the magician Prospero. | |
| Strauss, Justice | There are many Strausses to choose from. The most famous is the Strauss family from Vienna who produced so many composers, with Johann Strauss, Jr., the most famous of them. He was called The Waltz King because of all the beautiful waltzes he composed. Another famous composer was Richard Strauss, who also wrote gorgeous music, although he was no kin to Johann. Levi Strauss helped popularize the denim workpants known as blue jeans. | |
| Sunny Baudelaire | see Baudelaire | |
| Swarthy Swamp | Swarthy means dark and murky. |
| tawdry | In England, there used to be a market in a town called St. Audrey’s, and the lace sold there was really cheap and not very nice. As the English usually do, they began to slur the two parts of the village name together, starting with s’taudrey, and finally ending with tawdry, which still means cheap and not very nice. | |
| Tedia | A town on the way to Uncle Monty’s house in The Reptile Room. Tedium is another word for boredom. |
| Unbelievably, there are no U's at this time. |
| van de Wetering, Baron | Someone mentioned in a letter from the Duchess of Winnipeg in the Autobiography. Janwillem van de Wetering is a Dutch-born mystery writer who lives in Maine. | |
| Vane, Cynthia | A patient in Heimlich Hospital with a terrible toothache. There is a character with that name in Vladimir Nabokov’s The Vane Sisters, but why she would have a toothache is anyone’s guess. | |
| Veblen Hall | Where the auction in The Ersatz Elevator is held. Thorstein Veblen was an author who wrote about economics around the turn of the 20th century. His most famous book was The Theory of the Leisure Class. In it, he used the term conspicuous consumption, which talked about how people spend money on expensive things just to show off how much money they have. Sounds a lot like Esmé Squalor. | |
| V.F.D. | Variously (follow down) :
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| Violet Baudelaire | see Baudelaire |
| Weirdly, there are no W's at this time. |
| Weirdly, there are no X's at this time. |
| Weirdly, there are no Y's at this time. |
| Weirdly, there are no Z's at this time. |
This site is maintained, alas, by Dale Lyles. The fact that it is not finished, as well as any errors contained herein, is due entirely to that unfortunate fact. No doubt due to his natural pessimism, Mr. Lyles is convinced that Book the Twelfth will be the final volume in the Series.