Seems slow around here.
I’m racing to finish a chapter (20, of about 25) in the upcoming MS–so yet another delay in my long planned post on ProPublica’s China-virus debacle.
Instead, let’s talk about naming.
Actually–about naming disasters. I was today years old when I discovered that the army of treason (aka CSA) had a brigadier general who was actually called States Rights Gist.
Guess we can infer the politics of his dad, Nathaniel.
Still, dude! Have some pity on your child, who, it may surprise you, is not actually simply a billboard for your hateful ideas.
States Rights himself was killed in action at the second Battle of Franklin–which is best remembered as one of John Bell Hood’s signal contributions to the Union cause.
With that–this thread is open, with an especial premium for material on great or greatly ridiculous naming follies.
ETA: I should confess that this post really is an excuse for me to post that painting. OMG–what an amazing piece of work.
Image: Piero Della Francesca, Baptism of Christ, c. 1450
Roger Moore
It wasn’t that uncommon for people to be named for virtues back then, and Gist’s father clearly believed States Rights were a virtue. OK, that’s a bit of a stretch, but it does seem like a reasonable way to tie the name to an established naming practice.
raven
My wife is from Appomattox, VA and there is an undertaker there named “Stiff”!
NotMax
Naming? Two memorable ones I’ve linked to before.
Preserved Fish — Wankard Pooser
BC in Illinois
Old BC family naming joke:
+ + +
Actual BC family naming account:
She did learn to love the name.
Gin & Tonic
Been way too long since I read the New Testament, but who’s the dude stripping down in the background?
oldster
I’ve always love the Cromwell-era English Puritan whose name was Praise-God Barebones, although that may have been short for his full baptismal name, Unless-Jesus-Christ-Had-Died-For-Thee-Thou-Hadst-Been-Damned Barebones.
Imagine calling him into supper!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praise-God_Barebone
CaseyL
Like @Roger Moore: said, there was a fashion in the 18-19th Centuries among certain sects to name kids after virtues, which is how people got saddled with names like Patience, Temperance, Prudence, Charity, etc.
Some of the names persisted even after the fashion faded. Mercy and Grace, for example, are “just names” now. Which is probably better for the kid, rather than being aware that you’ve been named for an entire unmitigated virtue with the tacit expectation that you should embody it.
It seems the fashion may be reviving, as many people are going as retro as they can to name their kids (or rename themselves!). Hopefully just because they like the old-fashioned sound, and not the imposed aspiration!
Kent
I have a student in class who is named “Samwise” He has a little brother at home who is named “Elrond
I’m kind of a Roman history buff and I’m surprised we don’t see more Roman names. Some of them are very cool.
Lucius, Valerian, Aurelia Livia, etc.
I guess we do use some like Camila, Julia, and Marcus. But there are so many more cool ones.
Betty Cracker
One of my great-great grandmothers was named “Experience.” Who could name a by-definition inexperienced baby Experience? A great-great uncle was named “Marvel.” Lots of weird and wonderful and embarrassing names on both sides of my family tree.
Mimi haha
I’ve always been disappointed Petroleum V Nasby is a pseudonym.
NotMax
Kind of topical.
Xavier
There was a dentist here in town named Winston Payne.
Citizen Alan
@oldster: The best, of course, was the entirely fictional Thou-Shalt-Not-Commit-Adultery Pulsifer from Good Omens.
SiubhanDuinne
@raven:
Years ago, there was a player in the Braves organization named Wonderful Terrific Monds III. Gotta love the name, and especially that he was a three-sticks.
Roger Moore
What I find interesting is the way they show him being baptized. They know the story of him going down to the river to be baptized, but they shown him having water poured over his head rather than full immersion. I’m pretty sure John the Baptist was a dunker, not a sprinkler.
Anoniminous
@Kent:
There were a raft of girls named “Galadriel” in the middle to late 60s. Since it means “maiden crowned with a garland of bright radiance” I could think of worse.
Got curious and looked it up. It is #16,487 in popularity in 2021
Kent
@NotMax: Unisex names typically drift one way or the other over time.
Like Tracy, Allison, Aubrey, etc.
I think more become girls names than the reverse.
NotMax
Just popped into the head memory of someone from Maui who is at least semi-famous in some circles.
Origuy
Tom, your painting got me going through a dive into some interesting pages. The Wikimedia link says that it is currently in the National Gallery in London. The gallery’s site says that it was purchased in 1861 and that Piero made this picture for the Camaldolese Abbey of his hometown of Borgo Sansepolcro. I wondered why it had been sold and who sold it. The Wikipedia page for the Camaldolese doesn’t mention an abbey in Sansepolcro, but they have a hermitage in Big Sur. The page for Sansepolcro mentions Piero, of course, and a place called Convento di Montecasale, which was formerly the Camaldolese Abbey. The Camoldolese order gave the place to the Franciscans in 1213. The Augustinians took over in 1268 and the Capucins have occupied it since the 16th century. So some Capucin abbot in 1861 decided it didn’t fit the decor, I guess.
I also learned that Sansepolcro is where Buitoni pasta is made.
Tom Levenson
@Xavier: I was once treated by a massage therapist named Randy Payne.
Didn’t like to dwell on that one all that much.
Betty Cracker
@SiubhanDuinne: I wonder what people called him? WT? Trey?
Tom Levenson
@Origuy: I tend to go visit this painting just about every time I’m in London.
It really is a magical work.
Have no idea how it ended up in the National Gallery–but it is nice to know from your post that it appears not to have been by brigandage and looting.
Tom Levenson
@oldster: Had not known of Mr. Barebone, and my world is measurably enriched for having made his acquaintance.
Thanks!
JanieM
@SiubhanDuinne: Baseball names are a topic in itself…. remember Early Wynn?
But I like the ones where some baseball-loving parent named a child for a player, and the child went on to become a major league player:
Ryne Duren -> Ryne Sandberg
Jackie Robinson -> Robinson Cano
And the news that made me think about this yesterday:
Derek Jeter -> Jeter Downs
I’m sure there are thousands of kids who are named after sports stars who don’t go on to be pros themselves, but this still sometimes seems a little uncanny to me.
Origuy
@Kent: Classical names were popular in the South in the 19th century, but they were given to enslaved people.
Lapassionara
Wasn’t there a politician in Texas with a last name of “Hogg,” and didn’t he name his daughters “Ima” and “Ura”? Or was someone joking with me?
Jay C
@Gin & Tonic:
Agree about the painting being amazing: even though the composition is, on its face, fairly unbalanced, Piero has managed to put everything in just the right place so that the viewer won’t notice it. That’s genius….
and the dude shucking off at right is probably just there for balance- no iconography probably intended.
Old School
I knew of a guy whose parents named July August September October November, but was known as Jason.
Origuy
@Tom Levenson: Well, 1861 was in the middle of the wars of Italian unification, so the abbey might have been short of money.
Tom Levenson
@Jay C: I was just reading up on it, and it seems that painting is explicitly designed around geometrical principles. It’s divided in half by the central vertical; it’s divided into the golden ratio by the placing of the tree, and the angels and the background guy going for a dip balance each other.
Not bad!
Tom Levenson
@Origuy: Makes sense.
Anoniminous
Speaking of looting and bad names: The Elgin Marbles.
Roughly half of the surviving sculptures of the Parthenon in Athens. Thomas Bruce Earl of Elgin claimed to have bought them from the Ottoman Empire’s Head Honcho of Greece whose name, amazingly enough, is not found in the very well kept records of the Ottoman Empire. Currently in the custody of the British Museum and they have no intention of returning the
stolen propertyart works tothe victimGreece.catothedog
@CaseyL:
Reminds me of the old joke about the lover finally making the choice among his lovers ..
Lord have Mercy, and grant me Grace
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Or he had a wastrel nephew (or… “nephew”) who had squandered the patrimony on a dancer or opera singer
There go two miscreants
Likewise, especially since in that era it could very well have been real!
zhena gogolia
@Gin & Tonic: I was wondering about that too. Reminds me of the boy in a shirt who’s running away from the tomb in Mark. ETA: I guess it was at the arrest, not the tomb.
Math Guy
Mine is a very common name. Not quite “John Smith” common, but close. Not only have I had two students who shared my name (first and last), I had a neighbor up the street with the same name (our mail was frequently mixed up), and there was another guy who was one hell of a deadbeat: twice, I had police come to my apartment when they were trying to find him, had a collection agency go after me for his debts forcing me to get a lawyer to sue the collection agency, and I had to convince an insurance agent that I was not him before they would issue me a policy.
WV Blondie
@Lapassionara: I have an extremely memorable name IRL (I’m the only one in the U.S., maybe in the English-speaking world), and I used to complain bitterly to my parents about it. My father always trotted out the story of Ima and Ura Hogg to tell me it could have been worse.
WV Blondie
Duplicate
mrmoshpotato
“We’re Mr. and Mrs. Jones, and this is our baby boy Basketball.
Yes. We have a Basketball Jones!”
trollhattan
@Tom Levenson: Buddy growing up was Tom Payne and dad was a heart surgeon. There were never any jokes about that, no sir. In the neighborhood we also had a Dr. Doctor, M.D. Definitely seemed preordained.
WereBear
In seventh grade I assisted my favorite history teacher and learned that a boy with a nickname was actually named President-Firstname President-Lastname Family-Name (which sounds like a ball of mud hitting a sidewalk) the Third.
The nickname was in self defense.
Leslie
There was a doctor in my home town named Fillerup.
He was an OB-GYN.
redoubtagain
@JanieM: Frank Lary -> Lary Sorensen
Mickey Cochrane –> Mickey Mantle
trollhattan
@mrmoshpotato: Same Mrs. Jones that had a thing goin’ on with Billy Paul?
trollhattan
@Leslie: I love that so much.
Fake Irishman
Ima Hogg was indeed a well-known Houston philanthropist and civic booster. you can visit her estate on Buffalo Bayou.
edit: meant as a response to #26
JanieM
@redoubtagain: Sweet! I didn’t know about those.
eachother
Times change.
What was once called a battle between First Americans and US Cavalry is now called a massacre.
The Bear River Massacre. Maybe the largest in US history. 1863.
zhena gogolia
I’ve posted this one before, I heard from a Texas friend that the president of his high-school class (or somebody running for president, can’t remember) was one Dyke Fagg.
Fake Irishman
@Fake Irishman:
Also, a public middle school near my neighborhood is named after Ima Hogg, likely much to the delight of every silly sixth-grader who attends.
David_C
I used to use that painting in my Sunday School lessons. A few interesting points: how the river bed is dry in the foreground but filled with water in the background, of course, the dove symbolizing the Holy Spirit, a living tree in the same plane as Jesus, contrast of the next (?) to be baptized and the religious leaders in their finery, the expressions of the angels…
zhena gogolia
There was a Soviet TV personality named Melor Sturua. He used to be Melors. Marx-Engels-Lenin-Oktiabrskaia-Revolutsiia[-Stalin]
trollhattan
@Roger Moore: Too far from the nearest body of water?
“C’mon Jesus, the Sea of Galilee is just [counts on fingers] a nine-day walk.”
“I calleth thee John the Baptist, not John the Endurance Coach.”
Steeplejack
@CaseyL:
Endeavour Morse.
mrmoshpotato
@trollhattan: Possibly.
Leslie
@Math Guy: There was another person in California with my first and last name. We were at the same college for a while. I never met them, but once got a phone call from their father, who was trying to track them down.
trollhattan
@Fake Irishman: What’s their mascot?
Omnes Omnibus
@Kent: Roman names or variations on them crop up in Romania a lot.
Fake Irishman
@Leslie:
There was a urologist at a major Cleveland OH hospital for a long time named “Dickman” it was always hilarious hearing him do health news segments the radio for certain types of men’s related issues.
Martin
@Anoniminous: My favorite confession by a curator there was that if the British museum gave back its looted artifacts, that there’d be nothing left.
We really need a word that describes the analytical recognition of a truth but the emotional inability of accepting it. It shows up so fucking often.
HumboldtBlue
There is a young man in the NFL named Equanimeous St. Brown.
It’s also interesting to see how many names from the African American community have become common, such as DeJuan, Devontae, Trayvon. Denzel, Dewayne etc.
trollhattan
@Leslie: Same. My doppelganger lived in Lodi. I’d get phone calls for him and I suspect the reverse occurred, but I never reached out to ask “Did you know there are two of us?”
Then he died, giving me major heebie-jeebies. [narrator: And thus, there was but one.]
Fake Irishman
@trollhattan: the Razorbacks, naturally.
They do not have a law enforcement vocational education program as far as I know.
HinTN
@Gin & Tonic: Seemingly with briefs/underwear! Also, what’s with ther seemingly disinterested person in blue?
Leslie
@Fake Irishman: Dr. Dickman sounds like a character in a certain type of low-budget film. That urologist apparently made the most of it.
ian
This Key and Peele skit seems somehow appropriate.
C Stars
@Kent: My youngest one’s middle name is Aurelius.
PAM Dirac
@WV Blondie: If you google my last name you get only my family (through first cousins). Eastern European with a lot of anglicized variants and our family just ended up with one that no other family chose.
Math Guy
Does anyone remember Laszlo Toth?
C Stars
@trollhattan: My dentist throughout my childhood was named Terribilini.
Anoniminous
@Martin:
There’s always ….
Cognitive Dissonance: the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, or emotions relating to behavioral decisions
trollhattan
@Fake Irishman: @Leslie:
Immediately thought of the Seinfeld episode where Kramer gets the proctologist’s “ASSMAN” vanity plates in the mail, and decides he needs to keep them for his car.
Roger Moore
@SiubhanDuinne:
IIRC, the story was that Wonderful Terrific Sr. was from a family really wanted a boy, and he finally came after like 7 or 8 older sisters.
Martin
My middle school civics teacher was named Mendel. His full name was Mendel S Sohn. No period after the middle initial since that was his full middle name. Guessing Mr and Mrs Sohn were perhaps a bit disappointed their little boy didn’t become a musician.
He was a really good civics teacher. The only other memorable teacher from middle school was my French teacher because she was a hottie.
trollhattan
@C Stars: Leading to rousing games of Marcus Polous? :-)
TBH I like it, sounds dignified.
Martin
@Anoniminous: Yeah, that seems to somewhat miss the mark though. I’ll think that through a bit.
SiubhanDuinne
@Roger Moore:
I believe that’s exactly right. Great name, and great story.
HumboldtBlue
@C Stars:
I have a nephew who has the middle name of Augustus.
M31
LOL if you’re talking southern CT around 50 years ago I went to grade school with one of their kids
M31
my town had a dentist named Dr. Mangles
not sure how much business he got
Omnes Omnibus
@oldster: A good number of my Puritan ancestors got names picked from the more obscure books of the Bible. The male ones. Shubal, Orsemus, Elnathan, etc. The women got Ann, Jane, Mary, and Polly. Sylvia is about as wild as they got. Or Abigail.
Cmorenc
@CaseyL: and such as “Chastity” for girls.
AM in NC
@NotMax: That gendered use of names (or not) is so interesting. When I was growing up my name was not popular at all and mostly used for boys. When I was in my 20s my name all of a sudden because super popular for girls and every other little blond thing was walking around with my name!
Ixnay
My urologist is inappropriately named Dr. Foote.
HumboldtBlue
There’s a good “name” sub on reddit, r/normative determinism, matching people with their jobs.
Tanner Leatherstein does work in leather, Kenneth Gainwell is a running back for the Eagles, Danielle Outlaw is the Philly police commissioner, fire Lt. Les McBurney is here, and of course we all learned of Thomas Crapper.
David ⛄ 🎅The Establishment🎄 🦌 🕎 Koch
Alexa, buy 10,000 shares of Amalgamated Popcorn
SiubhanDuinne
@Math Guy:
I remember two Laszlo Toths. The original was the dude who attacked Michelangelo’s Pieta with a sledgehammer.
His namesake was aka (on SNL) Father Guido “Find the Pope in the Pizza” Sarducci, who as Laszlo Toth wrote letters to presidents and queens, corporations, and celebrities of every stripe, and published them (and their responses) in one of the funniest books ever published. Don Something, can’t remember his last name.
AM in NC
@Kent: I went to grad school with a woman named Goldberry. Tolkien has a lot to answer for.
M31
my grandfather came through Ellis Island in the 1920s and was told that his name, which started with a vowel, couldn’t, since that was too ethnic, so random consonants were listed, and grandpa stopped him at one, so my family name is pretty much made up
pluky
@Gin & Tonic: Some random. John the Baptist worked on a first-come, first-serve basis, but I presume he let his cousin jump the line.
El Muneco
@CaseyL: Back when I was playing World Of Warcraft, I created a character who was a female Discipline Priest from Gilneas, which is an expy of Victorian England, so I figured that one of the old “virtue” names would be just the thing.
In WoW, names have to be unique on each server. Well, I was on a fairly well populated server, so I didn’t even try Faith, Hope, Charity, etc. The next tier -Constance, Prudence, Temperance, Clemency – I tried and failed. I consulted a dictionary and ended up with “Probity”.
Xavier
@Fake Irishman: i hesitate to ask what their mascot is…
Martin
Surprised nobody offered up the ‘Guy Standing’ meme yet.
Miss Bianca
@Steeplejack: I’ll see your Endeavour Morse, and raise you one Increase Mather.
Fake Irishman
Another one I remember as a newspaper editor was the spokesman for Rochester Gas and Electric: Mike Power. Really good PR guy. Repped the company skillfully but not hackishly. Always called you back no matter how small your media outlet was.
M31
@SiubhanDuinne:
Don Novello, I think — and those letters were just great
trollhattan
@SiubhanDuinne: Don Novello. Father Guido was a brilliant sendup–he really lived that role.
SiubhanDuinne
@Omnes Omnibus:
One of my not-sure-how-many-great-grandfathers lost his life in the Wyoming Valley Massacre near Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, in 1778. He rejoiced in the name Eliphalet.
SiubhanDuinne
@trollhattan:
That’s it, thanks. Jesus, he was funny.
Orange is the New Red
@Math Guy: Absolutely! He inspired my only piece of fan mail, to Richard Nixon.
Anoniminous
Professionally one of the more tiresomely annoying misnames is “Dopamine Reward Prediction Error.” “Reward” has bugger all to do with it. Accurately it should be called “Dopamine Outcome Prediction Error.”
You expect a cookie and you get a cookie – Dopamine does diddly.
You expect a kick in the shins and you get a kick in the shins – Dopamine does diddly
You expect a kick in the shins and get a cookie – Dopamine released. Not because of a “reward” of a cookie but because you didn’t get the predicted kick in the shins
Martin
@SiubhanDuinne: Don Novello. ‘The Laslo Letters’. I had that book at one point in my life – it was hilarious.
Miss Bianca
@SiubhanDuinne: There’s a Shadrach in my family tree. Apparently he was the Revolutionary War veteran ancestor my mother traced back to in her DAR application.
SiubhanDuinne
@M31:
Thanks, yes. That’s one of those books I’ve bought perhaps a dozen times. Then I’ll “lend” it to someone, and that’s that.
In all fairness, the first copy I read belonged to a friend. I kinda think I might not have returned it to her….
cmorenc
a bit OT, but about 8 to 10 years ago, for several years there seemed to be an unwritten rule about girls’ competitive-level club soccer teams (and HS varsity teams as well) that each team was required to have at least one player named “Britttany” on the team. (I’m a soccer ref, and we always had to check the rosters pre-game).
SiubhanDuinne
@Miss Bianca:
Brother of Meschach and Abednego?
David ⛄ 🎅The Establishment🎄 🦌 🕎 Koch
@Martin: I have all three books. He appeared on the Johnny Carson podcast to discuss the Lazlo Letters, SNL, and his career in a priceless episode (link)
Roger Moore
@JanieM:
The best example of this is Mickey Cochrane -> Mickey Mantle. As far as I know, that’s the only example where both players are in the Hall of Fame. FWIW, Cochrane’s given name was Gordon, but Mantle was actually named Mickey.
Joy in FL
I taught 7th grade for years. In one class, I had a boy named Noah and a boy named Jesus. Jesus did not pronounce his name “hay-suss.”
In another class, I had a student whose last name was Couch and another student whose last name was Davenport.
dm
@Citizen Alan: I was always fond of Gravity’s Rainbow’s ancestry of its protagonist, with his ancestors Constant and Variable Slothrop.
New Scientist’s last page column frequently used to have a section on “nominative determinism”, uncovering names like ornithologists named “Bird”, meteorologists named “Gust”, and the like.
Ah, here we go:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism
trollhattan
@cmorenc: At one point my kid’s team rocked a triple-Sophie offense. Coaching communications were, complicated.
Roger Moore
@WereBear:
Naming people after presidents isn’t that weird, e.g. George Washington Carver, Grover Cleveland Alexander.
gene108
@Omnes Omnibus:
When I went to Hungary ten years ago, I met two men named Atilla. I didn’t realize he was still popular.
SiubhanDuinne
@Ixnay:
Many years ago, I knew a very nice research librarian named Forrest Alter. He was an excellent librarian, but I always thought it was a pity that he didn’t become a tree surgeon.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Kent:
Titus Maximus Tinsley:
https://www.actionnews5.com/story/32789777/olympians-son-gets-gold-for-cutest-athlete-on-track/
RevRick
Those archangels look awfully judgy to me. BTW, there are seven of them, named Michael, Raphael, Gabriel, Jophiel, Ariel, Azrael, and Chamuel. The -el at the end of each name is a shortened version of Elohim, meaning god in Hebrew. Names with Ja, Je, and Jo are shortened versions of Jehovah (Yahweh), meaning I Am ( or variations) and translated as Lord.
Baptisms in some early churches were done naked and the baptized were given a white shroud to symbolize the renunciation of a worldly past and putting on a new identity, a radical act of counter cultural defiance of Roman imperialism.
stacib
@Old School: My fourth grade teacher was Mrs. May, and she named her daughter April.
There was also the guy when I lived in California whose name was Harry Bush, and the lady I worked with whose first name was Betty, and she married a Crocker.
Adding, my grandfather, born in 1905 in MS was named Hercules. He refused to use it once he came to Chicago, and from 1928 on, he was William.
trollhattan
@gene108: Know someone who named his firstborn Thor.
Tall mountain to climb, that kid has.
Billcoop4
A guy two years behind me in College had a memorable name.
He was named Fallis.
Richard Fallis.
Junior.
BC
RevRick
@SiubhanDuinne: my paternal grandmother was named Euphrosina, named after one of the three graces.
UncleEbeneezer
Questions for international travelers: We are heading to the Yucatan in early January. When you travel do you usually get foreign currency (for tipping etc.) before you leave the US, or once you arrive in destination? We are BofA which partners with ScotiaBank which has banks and ATMs all over Mexico (including Cancun, where we land) and I believe it’s pretty easy to just get pesos upon arrival.
Follow up question: do you use a money belt or some other pick-pocket protection? Not too worried about that since Merida and Valladolid are two of the safer cities in Mexico, but definitely don’t want to lose our ID’s, passports. Just curious how fellow Juicers approach these things.
Roger Moore
@Leslie:
I obviously have some experience with sharing my first and last name. There’s the Bond actor, of course, but also a long-time editor of Dragon magazine, an HOF poker player, a nature photographer, and so on. I also found out there’s someone in my fairly narrow professional field with the same first and last name when I got to my hotel for our big annual conference and the person at the front desk had to try to figure out which Roger Moore was trying to check in. I sometimes get contacts from people in industry that were intended for him.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@trollhattan:
There’s Thora Birch the actress. Always thought that was a really cool name for a girl.
HumboldtBlue
@Roger Moore:
I have a nephew named Nolan Ryan, he wasn’t very good at baseball.
NutmegAgain
An antecedent of mine called Patience had a great-grandmother who, together with her husband, brought a charge of slander at the NH court against Francis Trickey and his wife Sara, 25-June-1656, for saying, “the said Ann Downing did stand upon her head until a cup of wine was taken off the heels of her shoows and that the Kings health was drunken, and more she said that the sayd Ann Downing was drunke.” Just one of my all time favorite stories–those are clearly the folks you wanted to party with in Puritan New England!
Roger Moore
@M31:
My grandfather decided to change his name when he came to the US. It was during WWII, and he thought Kurt Ludwig Landauer might not be the most politic name, which is why he spent the rest of his life as Lewis K. Land.
Geminid
Milton Shapp was Pennsylvania’s first Jewish Governor. Shapp changed his his last name, Shapiro to Shapp around 1937, when he moved from Ohio to Pennsylvania and began a career as a salesman of electronic components.
Shapp was a graduate of a technical college later amalgamated with Case Western Reserve University, but he’d graduated into the Depression and was hauling coal in a dump truck when he found a job in sales. This was before Hitler gave Anti-Semitism a bad name, and Mr. Shapiro decided that he would be a more successful salesman as Mr. Shapp.
Shapp served with the Army Signal Corps during the Second World War. Afterwards he made his fortune with an electronics company. Shapp was an ally of John Kennedy and is credited with a proposal that led to the Peace Corp. He went on to win office as Governor of Pennsylvania.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@UncleEbeneezer: We get it at the airport sometimes. If you’re confident that ATMs will be available, that’s probably fine but we like to have a little to start with.
Rick Steves says a money belt is a good idea. Better safe than sorry
Almost Retired
I have had several cases with an Orange County law firm called Payne & Fears on the other side. They were great lawyers and pleasant to deal with, but it always freaked out my clients when I told them we were going to a place called Payne and Fears for their deposition.
Anne Laurie
A trend highlighted in a popular kids’ novel, The Great Gilly Hopkins.
(My parents named me after a pop song — an outdated pop song, but still well known enough that I spent my youth rolling my eyes as people made what they considered very funny jokes about it — so I can sympathize with all these kids!)
Roger Moore
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Cassius Marcellus Clay. I’m thinking of the abolitionist, not the boxer who was originally named after him.
pat
@Gin & Tonic:
I like the Jockey shorts. Always wondered what they wore under those robes.
UncleEbeneezer
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Yeah but he’s so stoned 😂
We will definitely do something like that.
Ruckus
@Math Guy:
Dad was sitting on a Shriners bus for a trip to Las Vegas and a man asked to sit down in the next seat, and introduced himself by his first name. Dad responded “Hi my name is (same name) They did this for the last name which is also the same. And the middle initial – same. Turns out he also had a son named for him with the II added. Which is my name. And they lived about 4 miles from us. The middle name is different but that’s it. I’m not announcing my name here but it’s weird to go to dinner at someone’s house and there are 4 people sitting at the table with the same first and last names and middle initial and the kids are both the second rather than junior.
Splitting Image
I remember being very amused to discover that Ichabod Crane was a real person.
He was a Colonel in the U.S. army, and Washington Irving met him at some point and was struck by his unusual name. Later on, he used it in “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”.
Crane is actually an interesting fellow. He served in the war of 1812 and his son was a doctor who attended Abraham Lincoln when he was shot in 1865.
kalakal
Mrs kalakal had a brace of great uncles –
Even & Odward, they were known as Uncle Eve & Uncle Oddy
There was a kid at my school called Phillip Death – old Norman French pronounced de Ath, I’d love to know what profession he followed
I don’t know if it counts but my favourite pseudonym is Apollo C. Vermouth which was one of Paul McCartney’s
kalakal
@Splitting Image: For many years the BBCs leading cricket commentator was a guy called Henry Blofeld. His dad had been at school with Ian Fleming. When he asked his dad about it the reply was “We didn’t get on”
Someone who had the perfect name for a Bond villain was Lazlo Biro – he invented the ballpoint pen instead
Ruckus
@Math Guy:
Which one of them?
Layer8Problem
@kalakal: Boy, I bet there’s a story behind that.
kalakal
@Layer8Problem: Yeah, I’d love to know it
C Stars
@HumboldtBlue: the Romans have great “A” names.
Zelma
My mother-in-law was named Zelma Augusta. She also had a long French last name that was invariably pronounced wrongly. I attribute her personality to having lived with that name. BTW, my husband gave his second daughter Augusta as a middle name. I’m not sure she ever got over it;
frosty fred
Sorry if this has already been pointed out and I’ve missed it, but Miss Ima Hogg was a genuine person; her sister Ura is an urban legend.
kalakal
When Monsieur Bic ( founder of the ballpoint pen company ) died his widow took to funding French politicians. Sadly she was very, very right wing and funded the National Front. The Le Pen jokes just wrote themselves
KSinMA
@Math Guy: Yes!!!
persistentillusion
@Leslie: My SIL had the same first name and used her maiden name, so we were forever being confused for the other. Lived in the same small town, to compound the confusion.
My maiden name is long enough and odd enough that I was in 2nd grade before I could spell it. (Dutch nomenclature in the 16th C became a FU to the Spanish overlords – endlessly long names that related to places.) That initial was added to my first name in the end to differentiate us.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@HumboldtBlue:
Equanimeous Tristan Imhotep J. St. Brown
he has two younger brothers, Osiris and Amon-Ra, I couldn’t find their middle names, if any
@HumboldtBlue: friend of mine’s dad was named Augustus. It didn’t suit him, but Gus did.
bookworm1398
There is a fantasy author De Castelle whose bio says it is his real name
persistentillusion
@M31: My great-grandfather came through Ellis and the person processing the family couldn’t pronounce his surname, so he asked where the family was from and a bastardized version of that town became their surname.
Steve in the ATL
@SiubhanDuinne: I have that book!
NotMax
Zasu Pitts’ first husband’s family name was Gallery. They resisted the temptation to name a child Art.
@persistentillusion
Take it he didn’t hail from a certain town in Austria.
persistentillusion
@NotMax: No, op Terskelling (phonetic spelling of small island in the Zuiderzee.
Amir Khalid
There was a recent incident involving the British astrophysicist/TV personality Brian Cox and the British actor Brian Cox, both quite famous men. The former had a problem checking into a hotel room because the latter had just done the same himself, and the hotel thought the former was an imposter.
Procopius
The Christian missionary surgeon who operated on my late wife was named Dr. Butcher. A very good man.
Miss Bianca
@SiubhanDuinne: I wouldn’t be at all surprised!
Miss Bianca
@Roger Moore: My ex was named Theodore Roosevelt [Last Name].
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Miss Bianca: not just Presidents: Winfield Scott Hancock
Benjamin Franklin Pierce (I mean, okay, but I bet there were real people too)
redoubtagain
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
MLB pitcher and coach Calvin Coolidge Julius Caesar Tuskahoma (Cal) McLish. (Whose first major league manager, Casey Stengel, always called “Herbert Hoover.”)
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@kalakal:
Sounds like that might’ve been the inspiration for the character’s name
Dan B
@trollhattan: I have a long term friend whose aunt and uncle were Dr’s Hamburger.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
That is hilarious. I think that’s my new favorite baseball story
@Dan B: there is or was a Very Serious reporter at the Washington Post or NPR named Tom Hamburger, and every time I saw his byline my first thought was always, “Is this some kind of gag column?” I don’t have the same reaction to the name Frankfurter, or just Burger
Dan B
My very tall and rotund 8th grade speech teacher was Twila Stone. Can you guess her nickname. Hint: popular TV show at the time. She married a very short and skinny man, Mr. Gross. Oy!
Dan B
@Joy in FL: Davenport was my father’s middle name. His identical twin sisters called him Sophie. He hated that. His (younger) sisters were red heads and looked adorable so no one noticed him.
Leslie
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: That is one adorable kid.
@Roger Moore: For a while, I was getting emails meant for someone else at another university I attended (but not the same someone else as at the previous college).
@Almost Retired: There’s a law firm called Morrison & Foerster. Their website is mofo.com.
@Ruckus: A friend of mine had a somewhat similar experience. She and her mom met another mom and daughter with the same first and middle names for the moms and daughters. Different surnames, though.
@persistentillusion: I actually have a cousin with the same first and last name, who uses their middle name on FB to avoid confusion.
Shana
@Old School: Kind of like Richie Rosebud Petrie.
Shana
@kalakal: The Beatles also used to use Ramone as an alias from time to time which is how the Ramones got their name.
ExpatchadPutin has become Stalin, the destroyer of worlds
@raven: I am a licensed Funeral Director (Washington) named Tutcher.
T
ExpatchadPutin has become Stalin, the destroyer of worlds
@raven: I am a licensed Funeral Director (Washington) named Tutcher.
T
@Leslie: MET an Episcopal priest who said
“I’m Father Titcom…” Thinking of changing it to Breastperson”
Again, Washington
JAFD
When I was young, ’twas a noted baseball player named Al Kaline.
In the ’90’s, the city of Philadelphia sent two men to the Pennsylvania State Senate, both named John White.
One was African-American, the other Euro-American …
The Lodger
@Miss Bianca: I used to work with a Barbadian guy named Roosevelt Ulysses (last name). Named after three presidents and he wasn’t even born in the U.S.
Tehanu
I’ve been collecting unusual names for more than 50 years. The interest came when my home town newspaper published an article about a local insurance agent named Firmin Gryp, who had been featured in a book titled Remarkable Names of Real People.Here’s my Top Ten:
– Poopa Dweck
– Prince Octopus Dzanie
– Hermia Shegog-Whitlock, Esq.
– Blamoh Twegbe
– Ethel duPont Barksdale Wack
– Bruno Putzulu
– Felicity Twort
– Hy Hoe Silva
– Yakpasua Zazaboi
– Tunua Thrash-Ntuk
BruceJ
Bill Lear (of Learjet and 8-Track fame) named his daughter Shanda.
BillD
@SiubhanDuinne: Don Novello