You'll Never Be Able To Guess The Wizard Of Oz's Full Name

If you've seen the movie, you know the titular wizard's basic deal: He was a small-time illusionist in the Midwest. While riding in a hot air balloon, he was whisked away to a mysterious land where his magic tricks impressed the locals, who thought he was a wizard and made him their king.

If you've seen the movie, you know the titular wizard's basic deal: He was a small-time illusionist in the Midwest. While riding in a hot air balloon, he was whisked away to a mysterious land where his magic tricks impressed the locals, who thought he was a wizard and made him their king.

The early books in the series refer to the character both as "the Wizard of Oz" and as "Oz the Great and Powerful," leaving things ambiguous as to whether the land is named after the wizard, or if "Oz" is a title derived from the land. But in the fourth book, "Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz" (in which Dorothy and the Wizard find themselves trapped underground following a California earthquake), Princess Ozma of Oz asks him to finally nail down the answer to the question. Oz claims the land is named after him, telling Ozma that his full legal name is "Oscar Zoroaster Phadrig Isaac Norman Henkel Emmanuel Ambroise Diggs," and that early on in life he decided to go simply by his first two initials, in part because the rest of them spell out "PINHEAD."

Ozma responds that while that's fascinating and all, the land has actually always been called Oz and was always ruled by someone named either Oz or Ozma. So are we to think the whole thing was a wacky coincidence all along? Or else, Baum just wrote those pages at 4:30 on a Friday afternoon.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7qL7Up56eZpOkunCAlWxtbnFfrry2uMtmpZ6ulad6o7GMmpmlnV2pvG6z1J6qrGWknbJuw8izmKucXaSzbrvZrGSfrZyheq%2BtzJ5m

 Share!