The rumors are true people, you really do learn something new every day!! And for me, on this day, what I learned was something quite major about Cruella De Vil. You know, this bitch:
Let me first explain that in my life I've seen 101 Dalmatians dozens of times on VHS and have heard the words Cruella De Vil approximately one billion times. I mean, there's a song dedicated just to her name.
But, I've never truly thought about the etymology of her name, she was just Cruella De Vil to me, the mean lady. That was until today, when in a moment my whole life was flipped, turned upside down.
It started with her first name, Cruella. For some reason it took me 29 years to realize that Cruella= Cruel. CRUEL. Yeah, Cruella is just the word Cruel made into a name.
Obviously this makes sense, the woman was cruel as heck!!!
And then in a moment of true enlightenment, It dawned on me that her last name is also another word.
"De Vil" literally spells out "Devil."
Cruella De Vil is actually a pun/spin on the words "Cruel Devil."
Are you hearing me!!! Her name is subtly Cruel Devil!!!!!! It all makes sense, she is truly a cruel devil.
Even though it all added up, I still thought to myself, okay Lauren (that's me), maybe this is a stretch. But then I looked on Wikipedia and it was CONFIRMED!! THE WHOLE TIME THIS INFORMATION WAS RIGHT THERE AND I DIDN'T EVEN KNOW!!!!
Cruella's name is a pun of the words cruel and devil, an allusion which is emphasized by having her country house nicknamed "Hell Hall". In some translations, for instance in Polish, Cruella De Vil is known as "Cruella De Mon", a play on "demon". In Italian, she is called "Crudelia De Mon" (a pun on "crudele", cruel, and "demone", demon). In the French translation of the Disney's animated movie, she is referred as "Cruella D'Enfer" (Literally, Cruella of Hell or from Hell). In Dutch, the name remains "De Vil", while by coincidence the Dutch verb for skinning is "Villen" and "Vil" is the conjugation of this verb for the first person singular. In Portuguese, Cruella is known as "Cruela Cruel", which straightforwardly stems from "cruel".
So yah, either you knew this whole time and are prepared to call me stupid in the comments, or like me you are just finding out this little tidbit of information and are like, "Oh wow! Wouldya look at that."
