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Hi Olga,
Even the seven dwarfs are named for their basic defining characteristics: Sleepy, Sneezy, Grumpy, Happy, Bashful, Dopey, and Doc for “smart”.
The dwarfs had no names in the original story. Disney assigned them names. They didn't have many distinguishing characteristics in the original either. They were just shown as men who wanted a woman to do the housework.
When a school wanted to perform a play based on Snow White, a friend tells me, they were told that Disney had copyrighted the names, so they had to change them to Dozy, Prof, etc. They also could not use the songs from the film without paying Disney for the privilege.

Thank you! I didn't know that. But the point remains -- Disney distilled characteristics into the dwarfs to something extremely basic, making the young viewers recognize those traits. Simplification helps highlight the differences. This is common and developmentally appropriate for the age level. Interestingly, though, similar distillation works for older readers as well. Life is complex and nuanced. If we include too much, the through line gets lost. Good writers are those who know what to include and exclude in their stories.
Thank you for reading and commenting!!!!

Welcome! I enjoy your posts. I'd suggest that Doc or Prof indicated someone not specifically clever in this case, but learned. Doc was the oldest dwarf if I recall correctly, he had gained a lot of knowledge about his skill of mining.

Funny, now that you are adding details, I think I remember reading this story -- the non-Disney version -- in a book as a kid... Memory is a funny thing... Thank you for reading!

Originally a Middle European folk tale written up by the Brothers Grimm.

Yes. I've read some of them in Russian. In English, I was horrified when I tried to read them to my kids! ;-)

Dark, to say the least!