What was Voldemort's birth name?

Lord Voldemort is a sobriquet for Tom Marvolo Riddle, a character and the main antagonist in J. K. Rowling's series of "Harry Potter" novels.

In a 1999 interview, Rowling said Voldemort was invented as a nemesis for Harry Potter, and she intentionally did not flesh out Voldemort's backstory at first.

In the second book, Rowling establishes that Voldemort hates non-pure-blood wizards, despite being a half-blood himself. In a 2000 interview with the BBC, Rowling described Voldemort as a self-hating bully.

In the same year, Rowling became more precise about Voldemort. She began to link him to real-life tyrants, describing him as "a raging psychopath, devoid of the normal human responses to other people's suffering".

Throughout the series, Rowling establishes that Voldemort is so feared in the wizarding world that it is considered dangerous even to speak his name. Most characters in the novels refer to him as "You-Know-Who" or "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named" rather than say his name aloud.

In the second book, Rowling reveals that "I am Lord Voldemort" is an anagram of the character's birth name, Tom Marvolo Riddle. According to the author, Voldemort's name is an invented word. The name Voldemort is derived from the French "vol de mort" which means "flight of death" or "theft of death".