Just as names are important in Harry Potter, they're an
important clue in The Hunger Games. Some District names derive
from plants (Katniss, Prim, Rue); others from nature's elements
(Gale), others from the agricultural process (Thresh, Seeder,
Chaff, Haymitch); and still others from food (Peeta, "the boy
with the bread"). In the Districts, names are related to nature
in some way. These contrast sharply to names in the Capitol and
inner districts, which have come straight from the Roman Empire:
Octavia, Flavius, Portia, Caesar, Claudius, Brutus, Plutarch,
Cato, Venia, Cinna. (This last one is especially telling,
because in the play Julius Caesar, there are two characters
named Cinna: one conspires against Caesar, and the other is a
humble poet who dies because he is mistaken for the first Cinna.
Collins's Cinna has embodied a little of both.) The land in
which this story is taking place is called Panem, a Latin word
meaning bread. In the Roman Empire, a vast network of conquered
peoples, the emperor asserted