I love the fact that when Dumbledore has his climactic battle with Voldemort at the end of Order of the Phoenix, he calls him "Tom". Just his calm insistence on using that hated, repulsively ordinary name is a means of exerting control over the situation. Voldemort can't help but seem a bit less intimidating with such a common name, along with all the associations of being an orphan boy.
It struck me yesterday that both Harry Potter and LOST contain a scene in which a veiled character called Tom is revealed, becoming just a tad less powerful with the naming. When Ms Klugh casually names Tom in Live Together, Die Alone, he shoots back with an annoyed, "Thanks for telling them my name, Bea!" His irritation is short-lived, though; he ultimately doesn't mind being just plain old Tom, but he knows a lot of his mystique is going to drop along with the beard and the anonymity. In season three, he's just a regular guy whose insecurities are suddenly on full display.
Voldemort certainly isn't going to drop his guise for long, but just that flicker of recollection is enough to remind us that he was once a student rather like Harry. His despicable disposition was ingrained even then, but his power was limited, and it can be again. I hope Hagrid does get to come face-to-face with Voldemort before it's all over, and I hope he calls him Tom.
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Good food for thought! Names fascinate me and always have, as does the whole topic of "naming" (a strong theme in the Madeleine L'engle books I grew up devouring). What we're named, what we name others, really matters.
I think I've always looked at Dumbledore's use of the name Tom in several ways. First off, I don't think he's being completely disingenuous when he says that he has a hard time thinking of him as anything but Tom, because that's how he knew him first. Of course he knows he grew into Lord Voldemort, but I think when someone is very old (and Dumbledore is REALLY old!) there is a tendency to remember people from their youngest days, the days of your first acquaintance. Whatever he became later, Tom was first Dumbledore's student. And Dumbledore loves his students and cares about their well-being, and their growth.
Secondly, in certain situations he is definitely trying to disarm him. Dumbledore is no fool. He knows if he can remind Tom of his mortality, of his humanity, that those things will rankle. They may make him distracted, angry enough to mis-step.
Thirdly, and here's where I'm out on a limb, but I'm going to go for it anyway (they say out on a limb is where all the fruit is!) I think Dumbledore is using the name Tom to disarm him in a different way. Not just to shock or anger or throw him off balance or tip the power scales. But to try, in as gentle yet sharp a way he knows how, to call Tom back to his true self. It's not, perhaps, unlike Frodo calling Gollum Smeagol. Gollum hadn't used the name for himself in so long that it came back to him as a sort of faraway echo, but it stirred him...stirred him to remember the very distant past when he *was* Smeagol, when he was free of the power of darkness. In one sense, Tom never seems completely free of darkness (he's already corrupted by the time we meet him when he's eleven) but at least back then there was still some hope, he was still human, he hadn't travelled so far down the path.
The name "Tom" was the only thing ever really given to Riddle by his mother. Not sure where I'm going with this last thought, but it came to me, so I thought I would mention it. :-)
I can never seem to call people by a different name than I first called them; people have been calling my brother "Ben" since kindergarten, for instance, but I still call him "Benjamin"!
Anyway, I really like the notion of Dumbledore trying to bring out the best in Tom by calling him by his childhood name - and now that you mention it, that connection to his mother could have some significance after all. I love the way Frodo gently tries to draw out Smeagol; he never was such a great guy to begin with, but there was enough good in him to be nurtured. Sam's squashing of that is my least favorite Sam moment in the book...
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