Dr. Genericius

He must be legit. His name ends in 'ius'.

By some weird reason, wizards and Mad Scientist types often have names ending on "ius" (possibly just "us", but "ius" is just better). Smart People Know Latin, after all, so a guy with a Latin-sounding name must be especially intelligent.

Truth in Television with Vesalius and all of the other Medieval/Renaissance scientists who used Romanized names (Keys would become Caius, to cite a real-life example), the likely inspiration for the trope. It's frequently Canis Latinicus, though.

See also Dr. Fakenstein and The Great Whodini for alternate naming patterns used by scientists and magic-users respectively, and Herr Doktor for the German-sounding scientists.

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Examples:

Comic Books

• Spider-Man: Dr. Otto Octavius.
• Dr. Cornelius from X-Men. (He's the other guy responsible for Logan becoming Wolverine.) ^note Most versions of the story depict a bald Asian guy and a red-haired or brown-haired, bearded guy working on the soon-to-be Wolvie. The bearded guy is Dr. Cornelius. The bald guy's the one who invented the adamantium bonding process, and Lady Deathstrike's father. He shows up more often and is more recognizable, in the comics and animated versions.
• Morbius: Dr. Michael Morbius, a Professor Guinea Pig, became a Living Vampire.
• Dr. Pretorious from The Bozz Chronicles, who shares his name with mad scientist from Bride of Frankenstein.
• Dr. Pretorious in Sherlock Holmes and the Horror of Frankenstein. It is unclear if he is intended to be the same Dr. Pretorius from Bride of Frankenstein
• De Cape et de Crocs has the Mad Scientist (well, as close to scientist as you could get in the Enlightenment) Bombastus Johannes Theophrastus Almagestus Wernher von Ulm, who builds several moon rockets.

Film

• There is a Dr. Vesalius in the Vincent Price movie The Abominable Dr. Phibes. He's not at all mad, though.
• Dr. Pretorius the mad scientist from Bride of Frankenstein.
• Dr. Morbius in Forbidden Planet
• In Planet of the Apes (1968), the apes tend towards Roman-inspired names, and the film is mostly set at an ape academy of science, so doctorates abound. Among the main characters are Dr. Cornelius and Dr. Zaius, and there are more minor characters named Dr. Maximus and Dr. Honorius.
• The title character of The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.
• Dr. Sartorius in Solaris. He's not generally explicitly addressed as Dr. Sartorius, because all the men on the Solaris station are Doctors and therefore equals, but still.

Literature

• Doctor Faustus.
• Dr. Cornelius from The Chronicles of Narnia, a magician though not an evil one.
• Dr Igneous Cutwell, from Mort is another non-evil wizard, and is unusual in that it's his first name that fits the trope.
• The Vesper Holly series has Dr. Desmond Helvetius
• Harry Potter, of course. A lot of wizards have names ending in "us" : Albus, Bartemius, Lucius, Regulus, Remus, Rubeus, Severus, Scorpius, Sirius ... It seems to be more frequent in the Pure-Blood families, though.
• Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's Occult Detective Dr. Hesselius.
• The Crows Tower has Icherios Cain, the protagonist, who is an alchemist and is starting to study medicine in that book of the series. He is more or less sane, though most people might not agree, seeing as he keeps a rat as a pet ... A rat which, at this point, has licked up some immortality potion, and is not quite ... normal anymore.
• The Fairy Oak series have Hibiscus Castle, a sheltered young Wizard from the village.

Live-Action TV

• Dr. Cornelius from Doctor Who — a name which actually sounded somewhat jarring because of this very trope, given that he's an ordinary medical doctor.
• Dr. Gaius Baltar from Battlestar Galactica (both the classic and reimagined versions).
• Gaius, the court physician from Merlin (2008).

Music

• Professor Psychoticus, Mike Barson's alias when Madness were pretending to be The Dangermen.

Video Games

• Dr. Nefarious from Ratchet & Clank.
• Dr. Mordin Solus from Mass Effect 2.
  • Interestingly averted with turians, who, as pseudo-Roman aliens, frequently have names ending with -us, some of which are actual Roman names. Averted because we almost never meet any turian doctors or scientists, and when we do, they're not named.
• Dr. Mobius and Dr. Borous from Fallout: New Vegas. In their cases, however, the names also fulfill another theme, along with the rest of that level's doctors.
• Dr. Genarius from Frutti Freak 2.
• Avernus, Danarius, Decimus, and Corypheus from the Dragon Age series, all of whom are evil sorcerers. The naming convention comes from Tevinter, yet another Roman Fantasy Counterpart Culture. Silly!Hawke even lampshades this, saying that someone with a name like Corypheus is bound to go "mwahaha" at some point. Minor mage NPC Tobrius is, by contrast, a good man.
• Two scenarios of the Russian campaign in the first Empire Earth feature a Dr Alexi Septimus, who is a cybernetics researcher.

Webcomics

• Professor Odious from Everyday Heroes.
• Subverted in Last Res0rt when Gabriel Damascus ends up being a Doctor... except his name is actually Gabriel the Maskless.
  • Other doctors in the comic include Qin Xu and Daisy Archanis.
• The Order of the Stick:
  • Vaarsuvius and Aarindarius are both wizards. However, this trope is subverted by Vaarsuvius' spouse Inkyrius, who is an an apprentice baker.
  • In one strip, Elan decides to become a wizard and names himself Elanicalicus.

Web Original

• Doctor Trayaurus of DanTDM, the resident Mad Scientist villager who often helps Dan with his mods and owns an entire laboratory in the desert.
• The Descendants has Doctor Paralus, which is his actual name but the heroes are constantly mocking it as Powerless or Perilous. A Bad Future is shown where he does in fact become Doctor Perilous.

Western Animation

• The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius has Professor Calamitus.
• Another Dr. Pretorius in Felidae. In the German original, his name is Preterius.
• Yet another Dr. Pretorius in The Mask animated series.
• The Venture Brothers has Dr. Byron Orpheus.
• Dr. Anton Sevarius from Gargoyles.
• Dr. Malignus, a minor recurring villain from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003).
• Dr. Colossus, a throwaway gag from The Simpsons.

Real Life

• Dr. Viktor Capesius (1907–1985), Doctor of Pharmacy, physician and pharmacist in the Auschwitz death camp and right-hand man to another Mad Scientist, Dr. Joseph Mengele.
• Paracelsus (1493–1541), Renaissance-era Swiss physician, alchemist, and astrologer, and the father of toxicology as a field. Already an example for his chosen name (Latin for "higher than high", or "surpassing Celsus", perhaps referring the Greek philosopher Celsus^note Or more likely a Latinization of his surname, Hohenheim (German, lit. "high-home"), but an even more triumphant example for this page thanks to his full name: Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim.
• Carl Linnaeus ^note also known after his ennoblement as Carl von Linné was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the modern system of naming organisms. He is known as the "father of modern taxonomy". Many of his writings were in Latin, and his name is rendered in Latin as Carolus Linnæus (after 1761 Carolus a Linné).

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