Things With Awesome* Names

Kwakwaka'wakw

2011-02-10T12:00:00.000-08:00

If you put your right index finger on the letter 'k', your left index finger on the letter 'w' and your left middle finger on the letter 'a', and if you then proceed to tap on them more or less randomly, it turns out you might spell the name of a Native group indigenous to British Columbia. The Wikipedia page helpfully notes that in orthography it can be spelt as Kwakwa̱ka̱'wakw or Kʷakʷəkəw̓akʷ, but then angrily points out that it's wrong to call them the Kwakiutl, because after all that word is only 75% unpronounceable, and the Kwakwaka'wakw were looking for 100%. To that end, some of the Kwakwaka'wakw nations are called Da'naxda'xw, Kwikwasut'inuxw and Gwat'sinuxw. On the other hand, as they are responsible for the purely rockin' smiling-house illustrated above, they win for awesome.

"Cardinal Sin"

2011-01-27T12:00:00.000-08:00

There are plenty of people walking around with puns for names. Many of them made punk music in the early eighties. But it's rarer to find someone who (a) came about the pun in their name quite naturally, and (b) carries a punning name that's genuinely funny.

So meet Jaime Sin, who died in 2005, but before that was famous not only for his high ranking within the Catholic Church and his importance to the politics of the Philippines but also for the awesome name that resulted from that position. As Cardinal Archbishop Emeritus of Manila, he was known as 'Cardinal Sin'.

If you don't get the joke, while 'Sin' (or Xin or Shin) is not that uncommon a name in eastern Asia, the joke is that what we also call the 'seven deadly sins' are also called 'Cardinal Sins'. So gluttony, for example, is a Cardinal Sin. As is lust. As, of course, is this guy.

Cardinal Sin had a sense of humour about his name, referring to his official residence as 'the house of Sin'. He might also have taken water-off-a-duck's-back comfort in the knowledge that his efforts to topple the Marcos regime and bring democracy to his homeland would, ultimately, matter more than the odd giggle about his name.

"Anus Language" and "Anal Language"

2011-01-20T12:00:00.000-08:00

It's certainy funny that there's a language in the world called the "Anus Language", even if it's a critically endangered language spoken by only seventy people in Papua New Guinea. One is tempted to say, "come on now, let's not be immature here; it's probably pronounced to rhyme with 'caboose', and anyway it's a big ol' world with all kinds of different languages and names, and let's be grown-ups here'. But Wikipedia helpfully reminds us of the awesomeness buried below the surface with this helpful disambiguation:

Not to be confused with Anal language.

Which, you see, is just way more awesome. It leads to an image of thousands of linguists feigning sombre respect while still subconsciously giggling like schoolkids. Anal Language, it would seem, is spoken in India and Myanmar by some 14,000 people. That's still a tiny number, though it's exponentially more than Anus Language. It turns out to be a 'Kuki-Chin-Naga Language', which of itself is more than a bit awesome.

So it would be a crime to end this entry without pointing out that, while only 70 people speak Anus Language and only 14,000 speak Anal Language, there are literally billions of humans out there who speak out of their ass every single day.

"Vital Cliche"

2011-01-13T12:00:00.000-08:00

When you Google it, you do see reference to the boy's name 'Vital', which as I had suspected is pronounced "vee-TAL", like the hip-hop staple 'Cristal'. And since the web site of the Assemblée national du Québec lists the surname 'Cliche', whether belonging to this man or to his son Lucien or to his grandson David (all of whom were MNAs in Québec), sans accent ague, one must imagine that it's pronounce "cleesh".

So "vee-TAL cleesh" just sounds like any-old-person's name, quite concievable the name of a politician from Beauce, Québec in the first half of the 20th century, an elected MNA for the flash-in-the-pan Action libérale nationale party that was subsumed into the Union nationale of Maurice Duplessis. Not joining that party sealed the fate (obscurity) of this politician whose name isn`t all that cool until you look at it written on the printed page and pronounce it as two words, meaning a hackneyed phrase that is somehow essential or perhaps keeps people alive. That would be an awesome name, say for a book or a rock group.

Note: the picture that illustrates this article has nothing at all to do with MNAs from Québec. It was, however, no less irrelevant than any other picture I could find while Googling this most obscure of politicians.

Name-Change Petitions from 'The Smoking Gun'

2011-01-06T12:00:00.000-08:00

Ah, The Smoking Gun. While Wikileaks has earned instant notoriety for declassifying government documents, The Smoking Gun has been plugging away at it for 13 years. Why haven't the governments of the world conspired to bring down TSG's founder - whoever that even is?

Well, Wikileaks might be interested in cables from foreign embassies and Iraq War documents, but TSG has devoted itself selflessly to celebrity mug shots and silly crime reports. Noble in its own way - and a lot less dangerous.

If you ignore the who-cares NFL connection, there's a great article here revealing people whose surnames or given names at birth have been so unfortunate (usually foreign names that just don't sound that great in the English language) that they've been forced to change them. I think it's great to be proud of your own name, whatever it is, but I can hardly blame these people for wanting a fresh start. Not that in each case I agree with the decisions they made, but who am I to judge?

In Chicago in 2005, a Mr. Fuk King Kwok decided to change his name to the slightly-less obscene 'Andy King Kwok'.
I get why New Yorker John Pearce Dick was upset about his not-uncommon name. His ultimate choice, however, 'John Dick Pearce' is no better at all. In fact, it's significantly worse.
Another New Yorker in 1996, the not-too-bad William Gerard Doody decided to become 'William Gerard Ryan', a blander name made up of first names.
Henry N. Schmuck and the whole family of Schmucks, in Manhattan all the way back in 1942, went for the more genereic 'Shelton' surname.
Again in New York but this time 1977, David William Queer decided to become 'David William Quist'.
Still in New York and now in 1995, Robert E. Suckey Jr. decided not to repeat his father's fate, taking instead the name 'Robert Salviotti'. One wonders if he had any Italian heritage or just liked the sound of it.
Poor Monica Katherine Pinas of Chicago didn't have that bad a name... until you try to pronounce it out loud, that is. In 2004, she decided enough was enough and went for the not-that-much-more-respectable 'Monica Katherine Star' instead.
Mary Jo Porn of Chicago had a great name. It's not merely that her surname is so prurient; it's how it clashes with her corn-fed first name. I don't think, say, 'Elizabeth Porn' or 'Alessandra Porn' would have been as bad. Anyway, she'd had enough and went for 'Mary Jo Tavormina' instead.
In New York in 1967, Vladimir Fuka and his wife Eva Fukova (which I actually think is a very nice name) got bored of the snickering. So because they were sick of having a name that was just a letter-change or two away from a sexually naughty word, they decided to become... 'Vladimir and Eva Hervert'. Sigh. Well, they were Czech. Perhaps they were yet to master English.

"Poopó Lake" and "Lake Titicaca"

2010-12-30T12:00:00.000-08:00

Why oh why do they deny us the awesomeness? Or rather, why do they only mete out half-full glasses of it? I want my cup of awesomeness to run over.

Now, there's no use in complaining about Lake Titicaca. The lake, located in the mountains of Bolivia, is a God-send to lovers of awesome names everywhere. A schoolyard word for breasts and a schoolyard word for human waste stuck together: it couldn't be more awesome if it was called Lake Boobycrap. No matter your age, once you've stopped giggling at the name 'Lake Titicaca', you've stopped smiling at life. I think people who actually live on the shore of Lake Titicaca periodically still giggle at it: that's right, even people who know no English can giggle at the name Lake Titicaca. Its awesomeness cuts across linguistic bounds.

But what I don't understand is how I've gone this far in life without ever noticing that Lake Titicaca is just a few hundred kilometres northwest of Poopó Lake. However it's pronounced, I know exactly how I would have pronounced it if I had known of its existence as, say, a ten-year-old. Having both a Lake Titicaca and a Poopó Lake in the same country? Just how gifted is Bolivia?

Eternally is the ten-year-old within me jealous.

Incidentally, the picture above, swiped from Wikipedia, is apparently salt crystals in a footprint near Poopó Lake. No clue why that happens. Apparently there's fishing there, which is great, because "Fishing in Poopó Lake" is apparently the name of the Bloodhound Gang's new album. You can also go canoeing in Poopó Lake, though you might want to bring an extra oar or two. After all, you wouldn't want to be stuck in Poopó Lake without a paddle...

"Michael Hardie Boys"

2010-12-23T12:00:00.000-08:00

So this is what it's like being me. I keep a whole bunch of blogs. Well, 'keep' is a poor term. I'm a bit undisciplined about it, really. But I slog away at a bunch, nonetheless. And that being the case, happy coincidences can occur. Like the one blog I'm writing about democracy in Canada that gets to talking about a former governor-general of Canada. The page I'm reading (which was very likely Wikipedia) quotes a recent governor-general of New Zealand. Since, you know, governors-general have a lot in common, whatever Commonweath realm they're from (and I wrote that sentence only to use that cool plural form 'governors-general').

So big deal, right? Except that this fellow happens to be names Michael Hardie Boys. Or rather "The Right Honourable Sir Michael Hardie Boys GNZM, GCMG, QSO, KStJ", whose business cards must be A4 sheets of paper.

So how awesome a name is that? Let us count the ways. Well, there's just one way actually - the fact that his surname happens to also be the name of a successful series of young adult mysteries. Before I got bored of adding them up, I'd counted some three hundred written over the past, oh, century or so. They include such not-overly-awesome titles as: "The Missing Chums", "What Happened at Midnight", "The Twisted Claw", "The Melted Coins", "The Secret of Wildcat Swamp", "The Mystery of the Chinese Junk", "Mystery of the Whale Tattoo", "The Bombay Boomerang", and "The Clue of the Hissing Serpent". Yeah sure, the books are spelt "H-A-R-D-Y", the burger joint is spelt "H-A-R-D-E-E", and this gentleman is spelt "H-A-R-D-I-E". But what's a minor spelling discrepancy in the service of awesomeness?

Michael Hardie Boys, incidentally, was Governor-General from 1996 to 2001. He was then replaced by The Right Honourable Nancy Drew.

A-ho ho ho.

"Ho-Chunk Nation"

2010-12-16T12:00:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I feel like I mention Native Americans too often. Recognising that First Nations have some awesome names is cool. Dwelling on it seems a bit patronising, though. But how to resist?

I mean, when there's a tribe in Iowa, Nebraska and Wisconsin called the 'Ho-Chunk' people? Let's take a minute to appreciate the awesomeness of 'Ho-Chunk'. Ah... Moving on, the Ho-Chunk were previously known as the 'Winnebago' people (relatively standard Plains-style name, but way cooler because the RV makers stole it). It turns out that 'Winnebago' means 'People of the Stinking Water', and the Ho-Chunk people didn't appreciate the connotation. Thus, because they found the common name unbecoming, they went with Ho-Chunk. 'This is a name', they said, 'that will restore our people's lost dignity...'

Apparently, 'Ho-Chunk', which is quite difficult to spell after all,can also be speltany of the following ways: Hocak, Hotanke, Houchugarra, Hotcangara, Ochungaraw, Ochungarah, Hochungra, Hochungara, and Ochangara. It might mean 'fish eaters' or 'the big fish people' or 'the big speech people'. Or, as the elders declare, 'the people of the sacred language'.

Blah. that's the least interesting one. That sacred language, incidentally, is also called 'Ho-Chunk'. You'll be pleased to know it can be written using the so-called 'Pa-Pe-Pi-Po syllabics'. Of course it can.

"Shades of Death Road"

2010-12-09T12:00:00.000-08:00

There are just so many roads and streets in the world that inevitably a good many will have interesting names. It's kind of a law-of-averages thing. In the particular case of this road, in rural New Jersey, the macabre nature of the road's name, the origin of which is not clear, has given it a certain amount of infamy. Tourists will travel along the street, much to the displeasure of locals, expecting something spooky to happen (or stealing the road sign). Locals, tired of replacing the road sign, refer to the street by the less interesting name of "Shades Road".

Inevitably, perhaps, certain tales and urban legends have indeed sprung up around the street. Many seem to involve highwaymen, lynching and other such items from America's recent past. Wikipedia reports on a curious event in which a series of hundreds of creepy Polaroid photographs of women were found scattered in the woods nearby.

"Saskatchewan Roughriders" and "Ottawa Rough Riders"

2010-12-02T12:00:00.001-08:00

Image by Sangudo via FlickrI honour of Saskatchewan's loss in the Grey Cup last week, I present an oldie but a goody: the CFL. The Canadian Football League represents Canada in a way that few other Canadian insitutions ever will: rather hokey, definitely small-potatoes, and yet somehow carrying on year after year and never quite fading away into oblivion. I don't think that's praise exactly for the CFL, but it's if nothing else a fond recognition that, like the trains that used to run across this country, some Canadian traditions carry on long after people stop realising they're there...

I jest, mildly. For years, one of the best-known things about the CFL, particularly during its ill-fated jorney Down South, was the fact that in a league with only nine or so teams, two had almost exactly the same name. And a name that was/is, let's be honest, more than a little silly. Yes, I know, the two names were not exactly the same. Ottawa had - wate for it - a space between the 'rough' and the 'riders'. Saskatchewan didn't. Wikipedia tells me it's got to do with the fact that the two teams were for many years part of different conferences, which functioned almost like different leagues. Wikipedia also states that "the Ottawa team was named for the log rollers of the region's rivers while the Roughriders were named for an elite North-West Mounted Police corps of expert horsemen." None of which makes it any less silly.

Anyway, it's all in the past as the Ottawa team folded in 1996. In the intervening 14 years, Ottawa has managed to get, and then lose, a second team and is about to get a third. Perhaps they'll call themselves the "Argo Nauts".

"Amor de Cosmos"

2010-11-25T12:00:00.000-08:00

Image via WikipediaAwesomeness is largely a question of context. Let me explain. At first appearance, by itself the name "Amor de Cosmos" is awesomeness-neutral. Just a name. Closer inspection indicates it appears to more-or-less roughly translate as 'lover of the universe', which ramps up its awesomeness points.

But the knowledge that it was an alias, made up by an anglo Canadian born with the exceedingly pedestrian name William Alexander Smith removes those awesomeness points. Learning that he had his name legally changed while living in California, where he'd gone to participate in the Gold Rush, however, brings back those points, because anything connected with the Gold Rush is awesome.

Then learning that de Cosmos came back to British North America and served as Premier of British Columbia, serving a little more than a year in that highest of offices with silly quasi-Spanish and Hippyesque name intact throws the awesomeness levels through the roof. It reminds me of a time when the west was maybe a bit wilder than it currently is. And it could perhaps remind the beleaguered Gordon Campbell, upon his departure, that the office he's currently abandoning has been held by colourful people in the past.

"Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump"

2010-11-18T10:07:00.000-08:00

Might as well just leap right in with an explanation. A 'buffalo jump' is a small cliff-like natural formation on the plains. Buffalo being a herd animal, they rather famously like to stomp across the plains in stampedes. In pre-Columbian times, several Plains Indians tribes would attempt to divert a buffalo stampede so that the animals would, en masse, run off the cliff, breaking their legs and rendering them easy victims for hunters. So a buffalo jump was a place where you could make buffalo jump, to their (indirect) death.

Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump is such a buffalo jump, located in Alberta. The Blackfoot name for the site, now a UNESCO-protected heritage site, is Estipah-skikikini-kots, definitely an awesome name all by itself, particularly that middle bit. Apparently it refers to some Blackfoot person who was too eager to see the buffalo jump at work and decided (stupid, stupid man) to go under it and look up. He obviously got his head smashed in, and instead of calling it "Idiot-Looking-Up Buffalo Jump", they went for the more poetic "Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump".

So now you know how one of the coolest place names ever got its name.

Incidentally, the Blackfoot people could also be here on this very list. The first time I'd ever heard the word 'Blackfoot' was when I was a Cub Scout, and there were sew-on badges you could get saying "Je parle francais", "Ich spreche Deutch", etc. One was for Blackfoot, and I can remember confusedly asking my Cub Scout leader what on earth 'I speak Blackfoot' was meant to mean. He looked at the catalogue I was reading from, squinted his eyes a bit, then sagely concluded, "I guess it's a language." I thought it was just about the weirdest name possible. Still do.

"$#*! My Dad Says"

2010-11-11T12:00:00.000-08:00

Have you ever seen Gordon Ramsey on television? Well, I don't know what it's like in Britain, where (a) he's from, and (b) broadcast regulations are a bit less silly. I have seen some of his programmes here in Canada, broadcast either on local channels or on American channels whose feeds we get up here. And inevitably it's the same thing: a torrent of beeps imposed by the network over top of whatever string of invective Ramsey is carrying on about. After all, that's why you watch Gordon Ramsey, right? Not to learn about cooking or restaurant service or about exotic foods of the world: you watch Gordon Ramsey programmes to watch Gordon Ramsey swear. That's the sole reason.

So that being the case, American networks air him (and several of his programmes are, I believe but can't be bothered to confirm, American-made) knowing (a) he'll swear like a sailor, and (b) people will tune in for that reason. This being the case, there is an inherent ridiculousness in the barrage of bleeps. It'd be like launching a porn site where all the activity is hidden behind black bars. It's not like a news broadcast, where the network has to balance its own standards and sensitivities with the reality of 'outsourcing' its soundbites: if a witness drops a few f-bombs while describing the plane crash he witnessed, what is the network to do? Ask him to speak again but keep his language clean? Obvously a censor needs a beep-button. But in the case of Gordon Ramsey (or a million other examples, particularly on so-called 'reality' programmes), the people in question are employed by the production company, are contracted to them. If you don't want to air dirty words, ask your on-air personalities not to say them. Or if you want to show your on-air personalities to be short-fused potty-mouths, then grow up and play the words unbeeped. It's just common sense.

Make no mistake, the TV show "$#*! My Dad Says" does not have an awesome name. It's not a good name or even a 'meh' name. It's a god-awful name. What drives me crazy about it is the following: if you've decided that you want to name a TV show after a Twitter account (and that in itself is a strange thing), and if the name of the Twitter account happens to include a four-letter-word in it, there are really only two possibilities as I see it: (1) include the four-letter-word in your title, damn the consequences (i.e. grow up and accept that a word is just a word) or (2) change the damn name of your show. In other words, either $#*! or get off the pot.

"Sukarno" and "Suharto"

2010-10-07T12:00:00.000-07:00

Image via WikipediaLindsay Lohan recently filed a law suit against E-Trade, a company I know nothing about whatsoever, over allegations that their baby-featuring ads that made reference to a 'milkaholic' known as Lindsay, defamed her. She claimed that she had 'first-name recognition', like Cher or Madonna. Among other things, I'd consider those spectacularly poor examples since they intentionally use only their first names as stage names, something Ms. Lohan does not do. "Britney" or "Angelina" would have been much better examples, were the whole thing not a boat-load of nonsense. Which it, however, is.
Had Lindsay Lohan been an expert in Indonesian history (I do not claim that she is not an expert in Indonesian history, merely that I've never seen her discuss it), she might have focused on the Asian archipelago's first two presidents, Sukarno and Suharto.
Bad-ass these two are for undoubtedly different reasons - Suharto was bad-ass enough to be a dictator for over thirty years. The fact is that these two individuals are bad-ass enough not to have any surnames at all. Unlike, say, Madonna, who probably carries a passport with the name Ciccone on it, the first two presidents of the fourth-most-populous country weren't hiding their surnames. They merely didn't have any at all. This seems to be something endemic to Indonesian culture, and is inevitably way too confusing for my feeble mind to comprehend, as many other Indonesian politicians have more than one name, though several others also sport the mononym (I don't know if that's an actual word or not, but it ought to be). Sukarno's daughter Megawati Sukarnoputri, for example, appears to have a surname. Or perhaps not, actually, according to her page at Wikipedia, which calls her in full Diah Permata Megawati Setiawati Sukarnoputri. Although this litany of names apparently still does not include a surname, it is undoubtedly an awesome name in and of itself, one that overcompensates her father's relative namelessness. "Megawati", in other circumstances a measurement of power, is definitely a cool name. It apparently means "she who has a cloud" (n.b. awesome) and refers to the fact that it was raining when she was born.
The greatest find in the annals of stylishly-monikered Indonesian power, though, is this: Sukarno, who Wikipedia tells me Indonesians also remember as "Bung Karno" or "Pak Karno" (n.b. awesome), was born Kusno Sosrodihardjo, but was renamed after surviving a childhood illness. The extent to which, as a non-Indonesian, this makes no sense whatsoever to me is equalled only by the extent to which it is more awesome than chocolate pudding.

"Comet Hale-Bopp"

2010-09-30T12:00:00.000-07:00

To be honest, the only reason this comet makes it on the list is because of the awesome surname of the second discoverer after whom it's named. Thomas Bopp has a pretty interesting Wikipedia page, but suffice it to say that he has an awesome name. One that Poison were perhaps referring to with their top-ten hit "Unskinny Bop".

Yes, I concede that that's the most obscure reference in the history of obscure references. Even Dennis Miller would shake his head.

Anyway, Mr Bopp gave his name to the comet that caused a bunch of cultists to kill themselves, and the world was given the cool name "Hale-Bopp". That beats "Kohoutek" for 'cool comet names', but faces steep competition from "Whipple", "Väisälä", "Swift-Tuttle", "Hug-Bell", "Miss Mitchell's Comet" and "de Kock-Paraskevopoulos".

The competition for cool comet names is a fierce one. Who knew?

A Compendium of Rather Rude Place Names

2010-09-23T12:00:00.001-07:00

The number of communities in the world with awesome names is endless. Putting minds properly gutter-wise, I decided to concentrate on the giggle-worthy ones. Here's a decently long list, illustrated with signs from the communities. I guess I should warn that it's perhaps NSFW, though there's not much I can do about that. These are the proper names, after all.

The infamous community of Dildo, Newfoundland. Nearby, there's also a 'Dildo Island' and a 'Dildo Arm'.

Intercourse, which is in Pennsylvania. Population 1,558. Witness was filmed there.

Knob Lick, Missouri. Where Witness wasn't filmed.

This delightful name shows up on a lot of these lists, including the book Rude Britain - which suggests it's in the UK. Can't tell you much more than that, though.

This lovely place, which so many men have been looking for, is in Savoie. Which is in France. Apparently the name comes from the Gallo-Roman name "Pusiacum", which is in no way any less funny.

Anus is also in France. Not that near the one before it, as it turns out, but in Burgundy. And 'Anus in Burgundy' should most definitely be the name of a work of art.

Here's Muff, in County Donegal, Ireland. It's a suburb of Derry, a/k/a Londonderry, which is kinda in a different country.

There's no real point in spending too long in the UK, as Rude Britain has done the job well. How can you say no to Penistone, though? It's pronounced to rhyme with Jennifer Aniston, though - or, if you prefer, with Cece Peniston. And with 10,000 dwellers, it's probably the biggest community here.

This fine locale is in Bavaria. There is a building there called "Wank-Haus", whose picture I desperately wanted to include. But why break the trend?

This popular destination is in Orkney, where people like to pose with the sign pointing to them. People are self-effacing and oh-so-clever.

This charming community in the Philippines seems to have changed its name to the less enjoyable 'Sasmuan', which probably really bugged that guy in the orange jacket.

There are three different states in the USA that have a Climax: Michigan, Minnesota and Pennsylvania (where Intercourse also is, of course). Now 'climax' is not only a naughty word. Novels, for example, have climaxes. But that's not what you think of when you see this name, is it?

For reference purposes, for those who haven't been able to figure it out for themselves: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=Intercourse,+PA,+United+States&daddr=Climax,+PA,+United+States&hl=en&geocode=FeDsYgIdB7t2-ym7G_rMtDjGiTFs3nTVfH4VqQ%3BFUU7aAIdGqlI-ynXsNXQQDnLiTEc41kMQyeN5Q&mra=ls&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=33.02306,79.013672&ie=UTF8&z=8 is a map from Intercourse to Climax. It apparently takes 3 hours 48 minutes, and Google Maps advises whet everyone else already knows: This route has tolls.

A few street names? This chaste place is in Amber Valley, UK.

I've already devoted an entire entry to this one, but it's too good to ignore.

How can I possibly give up fair England, home to places like this? 'Fanny' means different things on either side of 'the pond', but it's even naughtier in the UK.

Charming one here. Don't know where it is, though I can at least say it looks North American.

This awkward one is a train station in Toronto. Viagra strikes again.

This horrifying one is in Lake Havasu City, Arizona. No idea what was going on in that community when they were naming streets.

This one is on the Busch Campus of Rutgers University, in New Jersey. It's just off Hoes Lane, which proves the whole area was named by drunk fratboys.

This one is in Hong Kong, where the obvious fact that this is a transliteration from Chinese makes it no less awesome.

Who am I kidding? How can I ignore the English, when they keep producing things like this one, in Besthorpe, Norfolk?

And lastly, where would I be if I missed out on this town in Austria, king of rude names, illustrated here with pictures of children. Because things are different in Austria.

I did remind you it was NSFW.

"Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"

2010-09-16T12:00:00.000-07:00

Image via Wikipedia
I have to admit I've never seen Blade Runner. Something about its fans turns me off, frankly. I don't know what it is. Generally Science Fiction just isn't my thing, and Science Fiction in the 1980s has all of the cheese with none of the kitsch of the 60s variety. So I don't know the plot of this book, since I presume that the only people who know the plot of this book know it from the movie.

The book was written by Philip K. Dick, who may one day get a listing here, alongside Jacque Tits. Before that, though, we have the book, whose name is not as run-of-the-mill as 'Blade Runner' (gofor in an abbatoir?) but has the much more interesting name "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"

I don't know the answer to the question posed. I don't know what the logic is behind it (I connected it with 'counting sheep' but I now realise that that's a gambit for falling asleep and nothing to do with dreams at all). I don't really want to know, because I like the title as a slightly poetic piece of nonsense, like Noam Chomsky's famous 'grammatically-correct-but-meaningles sentence' "Colourless green ideas sleep furiously". That'd be a good name for a book too.

"Salman Butt"

2010-09-09T16:08:00.000-07:00

So I'm sitting at home with my wife last week. There's something or other on TV, and she gets bored by it and decides to turn on BBC World News. I ask her why, and she says she wants to see what's on the news. I say, 'yeah, but why the BBC? Why not something local?' She tells me she wants to see world news. I tell her that the local channels show world news too, they just don't show cricket news. And to prove my point, suddenly they're talking about cricket. But... there's method in my wife's madness, for it turns out it's actually some kind of cricket scandal. I was trying to be interested (and failing), until suddenly my ears perked up at one salient fact: one of the players in the scandal was named Salman Butt.

Let's stop and consider that for a moment. (1) Just how similar is it to the Bart Simpson phone prank "Seymour Butts"? (2) Just how cool is it that in Urdu his name is "سلمان بٹ", which just looks awesome (as anything in the Arabic alphabet by default does)? (3) Just how well does hus name go with Philip K. Dick, Ed Balls and Jacques Tits, each of whom have appeared in these pages? The four of them should open a law firm together.

"Disko Island"

2010-09-02T12:00:00.000-07:00

Image via WikipediaWon't you take me to Funkytown? No? Well, that's okay. Too mainstream for me. I'd rather go somewhere a bit more remote, though equally funky.

What about Greenland? More to the point, what about a tiny island in western Greenland? And by 'tiny', I actually mean 'ridiculously huge, though looking tiny on a map of Greenland'. Greenland's not a small place.

While most Greenlandic places have both Danish and Kalaallisut names, and while the latter are frequently as cool as the language name itself (wasn't that Superman's Kryptonian name?), in this case Qeqertarsuaq pales next to the island's Dutch name (or rather it's English name): Disko Island.

How can there be no albums out there with that name? No dance clubs? It's just way too awesome. "I live on Disko Island... baby". Never mind that there's only 1100 people there, all of them Inuit, and that it's as glamorous as the picture that illustrates this article. It doesn't matter: funky is a state of mind, and those thousand-plus Inuit are funky in ways you've never dreamed of.
After all, they live on Disko Island...

"Brown Booby"

2010-08-26T12:00:00.000-07:00

Image via WikipediaOnce you're down in the gutter, it's tough to get yourself back out... so after last week's math whiz, we've got a bird this time. I think that most people are aware that there are a handful (huh huh... handful) of birds out there with rather silly names. And when it comes to this particular genus, really all 'boobies' are equally silly. Knowing there's a group of birds called the 'booby' ought to have been enough. I mean, in addition to breasts, there's just so much silly about the word 'booby' (not to imply that breasts are silly, mind you) - and that includes booby-traps and booby-prizes. The other boobies in this genus are also impressive. i suppose I could have devoted a page to Abbott's Booby or the Masked Booby. Or I could have just pointed you to the totally awesome "Category: Boobies" page at Wikipedia. But perhaps it's the alliteration. Perhaps it's the Vincent Gallo movie. I just know that "Brown Booby" makes me giggle more than any of those other names. And that's impressive.

"Jacques Tits"

2010-08-19T12:00:00.000-07:00

Image via Wikipedia
So first off let me apologise for my tragically long absence. I'd intended to keep this going every week, but... well, you know how it is. Anyway, at the risk of falling too deep into sophomoric humour... ah, forget about it. I can't do this week's edition without falling into sophomoric humour. You see, it's about Mr. Tits. or rather Monsieur Tits, a Belgian / French mathematician with a truly awesome name.

I understand precisely zero about any kind of mathematics more complex than division. So although certainly Jacques Tits's contributions to modern life extend further than a giggle-worthy name, the advancements for which he's credited must certainly elicit plenty of snorts on campuses around the world. Unless math students are a truly humourless bunch. To start with, M. Tits is credited with inventing the concept of Tits buildings, which are presumaby erected (ho ho he he) in parts of cities where I would dearly love to live. I'd love to make a hugle list of puns about Tits buildings, but it's rfeally shooting fish in a barrel, isn't it? Truly unfair to those struggling to find a pun-worthy subject.

He's also known for the Tits alternative, something FTM transsexuals have long debated. And additionally, it would appear that the Tits group is named for him. Not in fact a company in which I'd love to have shares (headquartered no doubt in a Tits building), a Tits group is, apparently,

a 2 = b 3 = (a b) 13 = [a, b] 5 = [a, b a b] 4 = (a b a b a b a b a b - 1) 6 = 1.

As you were no doubt aware.

Note: I'd like to include some links here, but Zemanta's mind is way dirtier than mine, and all of the links, while clearly sharing in their titles our esteemed professor's surname, seem to have interests in mind more prurient than math. The autosuggested labels for this entry include 'Katy Perry', 'Rihanna', 'Rosa Acosta' and (interestingly) 'Ellen'. This entry is probably going to get my blog autolisted on NSFW sites everywhere. Sigh. Monsieur Tits, this is all your fault.

"Fresh Kills"

2010-06-24T12:00:00.000-07:00

Image via Wikipedia

Ah, good old New York City... so tell-it-like-it is... I'm so enchanted with the notion that calling the world's biggest garbage dump 'Fresh Kills' is a vivid reminder of just how gruesome a garbage dump is that I'm tempted not to care about the rather more innocent reality behind this striking name. You really do have to admit that 'Fresh Kills' is an awesome name for just about anything, really, but a double-plus-awesome name for a huge garbage dump. Like I say, the story might as well just end here.

As it is, however, the story carries on. Fresh Kills, decommissioned as a garbage dump and now apparently about to be turned into a park (thus showing the new New York, which artificially plasters over its authentic ugliness with astroturf) is named for the stream 'Fresh Kills'. And that comes from Dutch, where kille means 'waterbed'. So it's just a boring multilingual geographical description. Well pooh.

Oh, and Fresh Kills flows into Arthur Kill. Which, in other circumstances, would be a super-awesome name too. Here, though, its coolness dwarfs by comparion.

"Punky Brewster"

2010-06-17T12:00:00.000-07:00

Image via Wikipedia

What I can tell you about "Punky Brewster": er... nothing.

It was a TV show. It was the main character in said TV show. It was on TV in the late eighties or early nineties and features a plucky young teen, or perhaps pre-teen. I should have been eating it up: I was of more or less the correct age. But for some reason, either I never saw it or I've subsequently wiped from my memory any record of having seen it.

But nomenclaturally, this is gold. This is more than gold. It's, like titanium.

I genuinely love the name 'Punky'. I have to assume that it's a nickname for the character, that her parents didn't say, "What a beautiful little girl; let's name her 'Punky'". I would guess that within the world of the TV show perhaps it's a nickname that indicates her character or personality. Shrug. But it rhymes with 'monkey', and is a-ok in my book.

In any case, it's trumped by the coolness of the name of the actor who played the role. As far as i know, it really is her real birth name: Soleil Moon Frye. I must admit that I don't know if that's "Frye, Soleil Moon" or "Moon Frye, Soleil", but I presume it's the former, and that Mr and Mrs Frye actually did name their daughter after two different heavenly bodies: day and night, French and English. Sounds nicer than "Sun Lune Frye".

Seriously, Soleil is a very pretty words and thus a very pretty name. "Moon" I'm not so keen on. But it worked for Frank Zappa, and I'm sure Moon Unit Zappa was pleased as punch when "Punky Brewster" came on TV to learn she wasn't the only moon in the night sky.

"N!xau"

2010-06-10T12:00:00.000-07:00

Cover via Amazon

I took an anthropology class in high school, and we had to do a project about a certain tribe or culture from somewhere in the world. There was a list, and "!Kung San" just stuck out amongst the others, and I asked for it without knowing anything about the culture. It was that exclamation point.

Turns out, the exclamation point is a click, and to say their name properly, you have to click at the same time as saying the 'k' in their name. It's tricky, but I taught myself to do it. Hey, a name is a name. Plus, it's way better than the more prosaic 'Bushmen of the Kalahari'.

Their awesome click languages, of which there are many, are a wonder to behold. They've always struck me as sounding like two people at once: one who is speaking and one who is just making different clicking noises at the same time. Human speech is so cool. I love that in Chinese, tone affects meaning. I love that Arabic uses sounds deep in the throat. And I love languages that use clicks. Just their names are brilliant: here are some Namibian 'Khoisan' languages: Gǁana, ǂHõã, Juǀʼhoan, ǃXũũ, ǂKxʼauǁʼein, Nǀu, ǁXegwi. No clue how to pronounce them, but they just look to enticingly alien.

Ah, and N!xau? He's the star of The Gods Must be Crazy, an awesome movie with a cool title. It's obviously Namibia's most successful movie, and N!xau, otherwise a farmer, Namibia's most famous actor. You might know that they made a sequal nine years after the original, adventurously titled The Gods Must be Crazy II. What you might not know is that N!xau went to Hong Kong after that to make a few more episodes in the franchise, Hong Kong-made movies entirely steeped in Chinese culture and with next to nothing to do with Namibia, except the 'fish out of water' aspect of a Namibian in Hong Kong. They have great names too, and lots of a/k/a's as well.

While the first Cantonese movie is called The Gods Must be Crazy III, its main English name is Crazy Safari. It's also traded as Vampires Must be Crazy, and the direct translation of its Cantonese original, An African Buddhist Monk.
The Gods Must be Crazy IV is also called Crazy Hong Kong. There's another movie called The Gods Must be Crazy IV, but it doesn't feature N!xau and has nothing to do with the other movies.
The Gods Must be Crazy V also has the highly silly name The Gods Must be Funny, the way superior The Gods Must be Funny in China, or best of all, An African Superman.

"O-Pee-Chee"

2010-06-03T12:00:00.000-07:00

Image via Wikipedia

It's sometimes very strange being Canadian. When in the USA, kids of a certain inclination would get all obsessive about collecting playing cards featuring sports players on them, trading with friends, buying albums to keep them in, buying pack after pack to find elusive cards required to complete sets, eschewing the opposite sex entirely, they would do so in support of a company called "Topps". In Canada, however, while all of the above could well be true, it would be in support of a company with an altogether stranger name: "O-Pee-Chee".

Like summer camps and Boy Scout events from the 1960s,the O-Pee-Chee name feels like a vague English-friendly approximation of a native American word, and according to O-Pee-Chee themselves, it is: they claim it means "the Robin", and is an 'aboriginal word' (since there is, you know, only one Frist Nations language). Why a trading card company would name itself after a bird, I don't know. But they do also point out the more obvious fact: that it's a rough homophone for "Oh! Peachy!", which is what I presume they hoped prepubescent boys would squeal upon receiving a pack of these cards.

It now being a good forty years since anyone ever uttered the interjection 'peachy' with anything other than satirical intent, it's a name that evokes little more than (1) what a silly name, and (2) part of it is a word for urine. Yay!

Not that 'Topps' is that great a name, mind you. But at the same time, well, it's no 'O-Pee-Chee'.

"Living with Crazy Buttocks"

2010-05-27T12:00:00.000-07:00

I've seen this one around in a few places, and so even though it's reading oddee.com that jogs my memory now, I'm not really giving them credit for tipping me off - mainly because I hope to crib from oddee on many an occasion in the future, and thus want to save my crediting-goodwill. If you understand what I mean.

Anyway, at least I'm not just paraphrasing Wikipedia.

So anyway, there are books with unknowingly ridiculous titles and books with intentionally ridiculous titles. Though obviously the unknowing absurdity beats out the sly-wink, I have to give Kaz Cooke, the author of this particular tome, credit for coming up with a truly inspired title, nudge-nudge-wink-wink though it might be.

It is a book about crazy buttocks. Or rather, it seems to be a humorous book about body image. Which, of course, includes crazy buttocks. Buttocks are, after all,a part of the body. As the petticoat-wearing, butt-massaging-machine-using woman on the cover can surely attest.

"Bapsybanoo Pavry"

2010-05-20T12:00:00.000-07:00

And here we are back at Wikipedia, a site I use so often that I think search engines are starting to think it's the subject of this blog. But where else, I ask you, will you find out about people like Bapsybanoo Pavry?

The article in particular is written with that entire lack of an encyclopedic style that you come across when reading rarely-read articles on the famed on-line encyclopedia. In prose becoming of People Magazine, the article talks about how this particular lady was born in Bombay to a Parsi priest, before marrying a 90-year-old British marquess ('marquess' is British English for the heraldric title that I've always known as 'marquis', for example the famed nobleman Marquis Mark of the Funkybunch) and living a life oddly devoid of healty sexual relations.

The rest of the article prattles on about stuff that doesn't matter really much, before crapping out spectacularly with the final sentence, 'few details are known about her life'.

Why thank you, my dear Wikipedia. Unsurprisingly, they're no good for a picture, and I snag the above picture from www.winchestermuseumcollections.org.uk, where she's described by her grand-poobah title 'Marchioness of Winchester'. But the name her mam gave her is way more impressive.

"When the Pawn..."

2010-05-13T12:00:00.000-07:00

So Fiona Apple, an American musician not named after Chris Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow's child (and there's a future entry for sure), released her début album in 1996 and gave it the not-insane title Tidal. It sold a few copies, and she was perhaps thinking that she wasn't properly eccentric enough. So she released her follow-up album, and called it, ahem, When the Pawn Hits the Conflicts He Thinks like a King What He Knows Throws the Blows When He Goes to the Fight and He'll Win the Whole Thing Fore He Enters the Ring There's No Body to Batter When Your Mind Is Your Might So When You Go Solo, You Hold Your Own Hand and Remember That Depth Is the Greatest of Heights and If You Know Where You Stand, Then You'll Know Where to Land and If You Fall It Won't Matter, Cuz You Know That You're Right. This is, then, a title so ridiculous that I've reproduced it here and have still never bothered to read it from beginning till end. It is apparently a poem she wrote after being dissed in SPIN Magazine. She wrote it in order to express her frustration at having to admit that she'd been reading SPIN Magazine.

Since then, of course, Soulwax and Chumbawumba have both, in a sense, 'beaten' this title for 'longest title in the world', with albums entitled Most of the remixes we've made for other people over the years except for the one for Einstürzende Neubauten because we lost it and a few we didn't think sounded good enough or just didn't fit in length-wise, but including some that are hard to find because either people forgot about them or simply because they haven't been released yet, a few we really love, one we think is just ok, some we did for free, some we did for money, some for ourselves without permission and some for friends as swaps but never on time and always at our studio in Ghent and The Boy Bands Have Won, and All the Copyists and the Tribute Bands and the TV Talent Show Producers Have Won, If We Allow Our Culture to Be Shaped by Mimicry, Whether from Lack of Ideas or From Exaggerated Respect. You Should Never Try to Freeze Culture. What You Can Do Is Recycle That Culture. Take Your Older Brother's Hand-Me-Down Jacket and Re-Style It, Re-Fashion It to the Point Where It Becomes Your Own. But Don't Just Regurgitate Creative History, or Hold Art and Music and Literature as Fixed, Untouchable and Kept Under Glass. The People Who Try to 'Guard' Any Particular Form of Music Are, Like the Copyists and Manufactured Bands, Doing It the Worst Disservice, Because the Only Thing That You Can Do to Music That Will Damage It Is Not Change It, Not Make It Your Own. Because Then It Dies, Then It's Over, Then It's Done, and the Boy Bands Have Won, respectively. The two main reasons I'm including the Fiona Apple album over the others is (1) the others have rather more obvious stand-alone short-forms (and in the case of the one that anyone in their right mind would call "The Boy Bands Have Won", an album cover suggestive of that short-form), and (2) the others aren't cheesy attempts at poetry.

Yay Fiona Apple. You won the contest.

"Pigbutt worm" a/k/a "flying buttocks"

2010-05-06T12:00:00.000-07:00

Have you ever heard of a 'flying buttress'? It's something to do with architecture, something to do with support. Blah blah blah, boring boring boring. Anyway, it's got a cool name. I was looking it up on Wikipedia, as I'm prone to doing, thinking I might add it here. But since Wikipedia has auto-complete, like Google does, this way-cooler alternate came up instead: 'flying buttocks'.

Whatever 'flying buttocks' could possibly be, how could it be anything but awesome? Well, on the one hand it's a worm. A newly discovered one, as it turns out, that lives under the sea, with Ariel and Sebastian. More to the point, and I quote, "the worms have... been observed floating with their mouths surrounded by a cloud of mucus." Charming, eh? Gotta love those worms.

Anyway, Wikipedia ramps up the awesome by saying it resembles a pair of disembodied buttocks. Thus the name - and even better, said buttocks are apparently porcine in nature, leading to the coining of the Latin name 'Chaetopterus pugaporcinus' and the English alias 'pigbutt worm'.

No words can describe how awesome a name 'pigbutt worm' is. It makes up for the unawesomeness of it being an underwater worm.

"Ed Balls"

2010-04-28T12:00:00.000-07:00

Ed Balls, secretary of state for children, schools and families and candidate in the ongoing UK general election for the Labour party in the new constituency of Morley and Outwood, has a cool name.

To look at the less interesting half of this story: politics, politics, yay politics. There's an election in the UK and it features this guy, a life-long Labour type who's been Gordon Brown's right hand man for almost as long as Gordon Brown has had a right hand. All that's good and current-events-y.

But let's talk about this man's name. It's not just that his surname means 'testicles', though that's impressive enough. 'Ball' itself is a not-unheard-of surname (viz. Hugo, for example), but that 's' is just all the more impressive. His father, naturally enough, was a Balls too - but still 'Michael Balls' just isn't as impressive as Ed's name. That's a hell of a name.

"Eyjafjallajökull"

2010-04-21T12:00:00.000-07:00

Okay, a little bit current, I realise. But in the midst of all the discussion of Iceland's first real attempt to make its presence known globally since Björk, not enough attention has been given (in my opinion) to just what an entirely awesome name the volcano in question has.

Let's work with it. Wikipedia rather helpfully points out that it's pronounced [ˈɛɪjaˌfjatlaˌjœːkʏtl̥], which certainly clears up any difficulty you might have. It certainly helps end confusion to know that there's two t sounds in the pronounciation, since there's, well, no t letters in the spelling.

Well, I'm sure Wikipedia feels our pain. They helpfully offer an audio of the pronunciation, in the very widely-understood '.ogg' format (sometimes Wikipedia tries to be deliberately obtuse). Here it is - knock yourself out.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/10/Eyjafjallaj%C3%B6kull.ogg

What I hear is 'ay-va-lay-va-click'. Or, if it's not an audio error and is the actual pronunciation, 'ay-ay-va-lay-va-click'. Cool either way, and something I'd like to name my daughter. The teacher might have problems with that spelling, though.

Oh yeah, ava-lava... thanks for, like, destroying half of Europe...

"Diet of Worms"

2010-04-14T12:00:00.000-07:00

When I was just a kid, and I heard the phrase 'Diet of Worms', it made me giggle. Later, when I was in university and doing a course in religous history, the name 'Diet of Worms' still, even in those musty halls of academia, made me giggle. And now here, all these years later, as a middle aged man, it still makes me giggle. it's good to know some things remain unchanging.

What on earth is the Diet of Worms? Well, it's nothing to do with eating worms (a la Nobody Likes Me, Everybody Hates Me) or with what worms eat. Woms, you see, is a city in Germany. And 'Diet' here apparently means 'Reichstag'. Let's call it 'meeting'. Or 'witchtrial'. Anyway, they all met in Worms to condemn Martin Luther as a heretic for damaging the doors to a church. Blah blah blah. Let's take a moment to consider Worms.

Worms was settled by the Celts as Borbetomagus, already a name cooler than anything you've come up with in your measly life so far. It means, I plaigiarise from Wikipedia, 'settlement in a watery area'. That mutated via Latin into 'Vormatia' (less cool), whence via German to 'Worms'. It's apparently the oldest city in Germany and part of the Nibelungenlied is set there.

And of course Martin Luther was hung out to dry here. The result of the Diet of Worms was the Edict of Worms, which should be almost as cool as the Diet, nomenclaturally, but sadly isn't.

"Humpty Doo, Northern Territory"

2010-04-07T12:00:00.000-07:00

Australian place names are notorious for their silliness - which, in fact, is possibly offensive. I suppose I should say that Aboriginal place names, or Anglicisations of Aboriginal place names, often have a kind of sing-song quality to the English-speaking ear that makes them seem comical. There are plenty of examples more famous than this one, like Wagga Wagga or Woolloomooloo, but I stumbled upon this quite by accident (while trying to figure out why Humpty Dumpty is depicted as an egg when the nursery rhyme says nothing of the sort). It has just a great sounding name to it, and I think some cartoon character ought to use it (with the meaning of 'oh my!' or 'yay!') as a catch phrase. You never know - it might catch on.

"Interrobang"

2010-03-31T12:00:00.001-07:00

The interrobang is a punctuation symbol. It's nothing sensational, or even all that useful really. It's a combination exclamation point and question mark. It does exactly what putting them side-by-side would do: show shocked questioning; a single symbol to do two jobs. Okay, in other words, vaguely, marginally, theoretically useful. Like, for example, in the following sentence:

"They called it an 'interrobang'‽"

As far as silly names for symbols go, this beats the clumsy 'octothorpe' (#), which really has only that pretentious silent 'e' going for it. This awesome word, however, is a portmonteau of, as far as I can tell, 'interrogation', which means 'question', and 'bang', which is an onomatopoeic noise that might well be punctuated with an exclamation point. No matter, it's just a great word that would also be an awesome band name. If I have a son, I just might name him 'interrobang'.

Frank Zappa's children

2010-03-24T12:00:00.000-07:00

How could I have forgotten about this one? By now it's all but expected that if you're a celebrity you'll give your child a bizarre name. I don't know why exactly this is, but the Apples and Moxie Crimefighters of the world have much older people to look up to. Going right back to 1967, Frank Zappa had already started the trend. Let's look at the four children in full:

Moon Unit Zappa was born in 1967. She prefers to go just by Moon, as Unit is her middle name.

Dweezil Zappa was born in 1969. The hospital refused to register him as Dweezil, so he was registered as Ian Donald Calvin Euclid Zappa. He's since had his name legally changed to Dweezil.

Ahmet Emuukha Rodan Zappa was born in 1974, and has a relatively normal name. At least, Ahmet is a normal name. Can't say much about his middle names.

Diva Thin Muffin Pigeen Zappa was born in 1979, and certainly got the worst of the bunch. There's nothing wrong with 'Diva' itself - it's actually a pretty name. But it's all downhill from there as we get to the middle names. Poor girl.

"Honkin' on Bobo"

2010-03-17T12:00:00.000-07:00

Aerosmith, not my favourite band. I mean, they've done a few good songs, but it seems like they've never overcome their status as discount-Rolling-Stones. Or, of course, their status as should-have-retired-long-ago (but I repeat myself).

Doesn't matter what I think of them, really. Sooner or later, as all rock bands do, they get the idea to release a 'blues album'. These inevitably consist of covers of classic blues songs (or, alternately, covers of Led Zeppelin covers of classic blues songs). Aerosmith went ahead and did theirs in 2004, long after most people had stopped paying attention to them.

Whatever. I've never heard the album, so I have no idea whether or not it's any good. But my prejudices definitely turn against the possibility of it being good, seeing as it has such a god-awful name (not a fair assumption, I concede). Wikipedia tells me that 'honkin' on bobo' refers to oral sex. This tidbit of info takes a truly terrible album name and lend to it entirely new vistas of horrible.

I... er... I'm trying to start a new paragraph, but I keep shuddering at the thought of just how truly horrible it would be to ever, ever attempt to use the phrase 'honkin' on bobo' to refer to oral sex. Like, perhaps as a bit of bedroom talk: “Hey, baby, would you mind honkin' on bobo a little bit?” Gah. Steven Tyler, you've ruined my innocence. And my appetite.

"Canaan Banana"

2010-03-10T12:00:00.000-08:00

I'm putting the picture I usually use to accompany these texts at the bottom this time, because I'd like you for a moment to ask yourself just what 'Canaan Banana' might be. It's so evocative a name that, shy of being a brand name for yellow seedless fruit, it could be almost anything. While it could be the name of, for example a clothing company or a movie of some sort, its mixture of religious geography and yummy fruit actually describes a man. Canaan Banana is the name of a man.

And quite a person indeed - the first president of Zimbabwe, the nation born out of the ashes of Ian Smith's horrible apartheid state of Rhodesia. His prime minister, Robert Mugabe, went on after Banana's departure from politics to mess up the country real good, but during Banana's time it was seen as a guiding light for the rest of Africa, and Banana was seen as that light's torchbearer. Among other things, he was a Methodist minister, he wrote Prince Charles a poem, he wrote a book called The Gospel According to the Ghetto (and once said, "When I see a guerilla, I see Jesus Christ"). He had a wife named Janet Banana. He was arrested for sodomy and ended his life a political pariah. Most awesome, and significant, of all, he had a law enacted forbidding people from making fun of his name.

Can't see why he needed it. That is one first-class name.

"iPad"

2010-03-03T12:00:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I'm late to the party on this one. Sue me - I was 'afk' for a month or so... it happens. Anyway, for me, the most noteworthy thing about the name of Apple's new I-don't-care-what-it-is-exactly-as-I'll-never-own-one is not merely its similarity to female hygiene products. More to the point, to me what grates about the name is how it plays into Apple's increasingly ridiculous policy of naming everything it makes with a lower case i out front, regardless of whether or not it makes sense. I guess it all began with the iMac, which was of course a variant of its very successful Mac(intosh) line of computers. So instead of coming up with some name like 'Mac XQW' or 'Mac 21', they put the identifying marker before the name. Clever. There was also, apparently, an 'eMac'. Yay. Apparently, the Wiki page tells me, the 'i' was meant to stand for 'internet' or 'individual' - that second one being particularly iRonic, as they've spread that letter all across the place.

It's probably the iPod that's most famous among non-Apple-geeks, and its virus-cum-computer-programme twin iTunes. But the iPhone is well-known too. Among things you've probably never heard of, there's iSight, iLife, iWork, iFund and, connected with the iPad, iBooks and iBookstore. All overseen by Mr. iJobs. iThinkitsridiculous.

Anglo-Saxon Kings

2010-01-20T12:00:00.000-08:00

I have a certain fascination with the Anglo-Saxon era of English history. It's just so barbaric. It may be a horribly inflammatory thing to say, but the Normans really did bring civilisation to England. However, one thing that the Normans did, sadly, do away with was a history of decidedly awesome given names. All the Roberts and Charleses that follow 1066 are just boring compared to some of these, in this comprehensive list of awesomeness:

Kings of East Anglia: Wehha, Eorpwald, Ecgric, Æthelhere, Hun, Beornwulf, Guthrum the Old.

Kings of Essex: Sledda, Sexred, Sebbi, Sigeheard.

Kings of Kent: Hengest, Æðelberht I, Eorcenberht, Hlothhere, Mul, Oswine, Eardwulf, Cœnwulf.

Kings of Mercia: Pybba, Penda, Ecgfrith, Wiglaf, Wigstan, Ælfflæd.

Kings of Northumberland: Eoppa, Glappa, Frithuwald, Hussa, Æthelwald Moll, Osberht, Guðroðr, Sigtrygg Caech (those last two were Norse, but awesome).

Kings of Sussex: Berhthun, Watt, Bryni.

Kings of Wessex: Cynric, Cynegils, Seaxburh, Æscwine, Ine, Cynewulf.

Kings of England: Eadred, Eadwig, Æthelred the Unready, Edmund Ironside.

Briefly, before the Norman conquest, there was a brief period of Danish rule - four Danish kings of England. As their nomenclatural awesomeness ratio is 100%, it's worth listing them in full: Sweyn Forkbeard, Canute, Harold Harefoot, Harthacanute.

If your name is 'Forkbeard', you are awesomeness in the flesh.

"The Shoes of the Fisherman's Wife are Some Jiveass Slippers"

2010-01-13T12:00:00.000-08:00

There are plenty of silly-cum-profound song titles out there. You could make a long list that ultimately would be very tiresome. But this particular one, by strange-name master Charles Mingus (he was a bassist too), has a particular lunacy all its own.

Until searching Wikipedia just now, I presumed that the title sprung fully-formed from the head of Mr Mingus (his surname really ought to be spelt ‘Menzies’). But it turns out, and obviously it’s not coincidence, that there was a book released in 1963, 9 years before Mingus’s, called “The Shoes of the Fisherman”. There was a movie too, starring the Mighty (Anthony) Quinn. The book’s got a priesty-looking person on the cover, so it’s a religious thing. How the slippers fit in, I’ll never know.

Oh, other compositions by Charles Mingus include: “All The Things You Could Be By Now if Sigmund Freud's Wife Was Your Mother”, “Oh Lord Don't Let Them Drop That Atomic Bomb on Me”, “She's Just Miss Popular Hybird”, “Pithecanthropus Erectus” and my personal favourite, “Don't Be Afraid, the Clown's Afraid Too” – on the same album as the present selection. Oh those wacky bassists.

"Urban Shocker"

2010-01-06T12:00:00.000-08:00

The Wikipedia page doesn't have much to say, really. He was a baseball player. He threw a spitball (terminology ridiculous enough to warrant its own page here). He played with the Yankees. He died from pneumonia. He was, as the picture reproduced above shows, a decidedly handsome man. The Wikipedia page has nothing to say about just how awesome his name is.

I've already spoken about the adjective-noun name 'Inky Mark', which is pretty awesome. But as adjective-noun names go, this one rocks its socks. It could be a genre of horror film. It could be the name of a horror film. Or a report on city crime or some other thing. Alternately, it could be a decidedly metropolitan version of a classic sexual hand position.

Wikipedia does report something even more awesome: Mr Shocker's birth name was actually Urbain Shockor, which is also cool, and I hope is pronounced with a French (i.e. Pepe le Pew) syllable stress. That would make my day.

"Milton Born With a Tooth"

2009-12-30T12:00:00.000-08:00

The rather awesome traditions that accompany naming people among Native American societies is well-documented, even further than Kevin Costner's movie "Dances With Wolves". They are, of course, rich traditions, traditions that probably predate European surnames or whatever. They frequently produce names that are definitely awesome: evocative names like Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse or the awesome-name hoarder known as Chainbreaker, a/k/a Blacksnake. They are, however, on occasion giggle-worthy.

So it was in the 1990s when Canadian government insensitivity once again pitted armed Native resisters against RCMP officers over some silly short-sighted development plan that happened (oops) to damage, disrespect or eliminate a local aboriginal culture. This happens with ridiculous frequency in Canada. In this case, it was Alberta, it was a dam that would have flooded burial grounds, and it was an arrest for an activist named "Milton Born With a Tooth" (also written as "Milton Born-With-a-Tooth".

All due respect, etc., but just try to deny the awesomeness of that name. Go on, I dare you.

"Butt Hole Road"

2009-12-23T12:00:00.000-08:00

The phenomenon of place names (towns or roads) with inadvertently naughty names is one that's pretty well-documented online. Who out there doesn't know of that little town in northern Austria or the one in Newfoundland or whatever... It's a pot I won't dip into too frequently for the mere fact that it's too easy. You can easily find lists of rude toponyms, and for me merely to copy those lists would be dull and pointless.

But... you've got to love 'Butt Hole Road'. I love it oh so much for several reasons: First, 'butt' is pretty innocuous as a slang word anyway, and 'butt hole' is rather a euphemism for the genuine slang term, spelt differently as it is in the United States and the United Kindom, for the anus. Second, 'butt' is largely an American word anyway for the behind, so it's entirely possible that the residents of Conisbrough, Yorkshire only realised its inherent funniness years after Americans would have found it funny, had they known it existed. Third, even though the Wikipedia article talks about how the embarrassed residents of (the four houses located on) Butt Hole Road were so shamed by their street name (not to mention annoyed that delivery companies thought they were joking while giving addresses on the phone) that they coughed up £300 to have it changed to the rather blander "Archers Way", the Google Maps page still lists it by its good ol' name. Fourth, it's apparently just a few kilometres away from Scunthorpe, the awesomely-named town in England whose name causes all sorts of trouble with Internet obscenity filters because of the rather filthy word buried deep within... seek, and ye shall find.

"Manholes"

2009-12-16T12:00:00.000-08:00

There are some words whose inherent silliness gets lost to us as we repeatedly say them over the years. In effect, we get numbed to their inherent sillness. “Manhole” is certainly such a word. In case you happen to live under a rock or something, a manhole is a tunnel that goes from the road surface down to the sewers or whatever happens to be underneath the roads. Yes, it is a hole in the ground. Yes, it is designed for men to climb down (women are, I believe, allowed to use them). So 'manhole' is a very literal name for them. Charmingly so, I suppose.

Except for how silly and vaguely sexual the name is. Like, did nobody realise the snicker-potential of the name? Did nobody think it might evoke, say, the anus? Or was the word just coined in a different, tamer era?

Pitcairn Place Names

2009-12-09T12:00:00.000-08:00

I have a fascination with Pitcairn. It just might be the coolest place in the world, and I'd love to go there sometime before I die. An autonomous nation dependent on the British crown, Pitcairn is about as remote as it gets. It's a single island in the Pacific. Population? 50. Fifty people, that is. Fifty people, one nation, one Google site (http://www.google.pn/), for reasons I'll never understand. The whole place is too good to be true. The vast majority of the residents are the descendants of the Bounty mutineers, and pretty much the entire country was involved in a sex scandal a few years back. They have a full system of government, but with only fifty islanders... you tend to see the same names recurring again and again. They have their own language, Pitkern, which Wikipedia has a page about, including such selections as:

You gwen whihi up suppa? - Are you going to cook supper?
Ye like-a sum whettles? - Would you like some food?
Humuch shep corl ya? - How often do ships come here?

And to top off all of this awesomeness... there is the map of Pitcairn itself. It's not a big place, and since all fifty residents live in the 'capital', Adamstown, there's not much geography. But what there is is awesome by the acre. Sights around Pitcairn, important enough to show up on the map, include "Where Dan Fall", "Bitey-Bitey", "John Catch-a-Cow", "Oh Dear" and "Little George Coc'nuts". Just try to tell me that's not awesomeness in a nutshell.

This blog entry mentions http://www.blogsurfer.us/ in it.

"Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha!"

2009-12-02T16:37:00.000-08:00

First of all, it's not that surprising to find places in Quebec named "Saint-Someone-de-Something". They like their saints in Quebec. This particular one, however, has 'silliness' written all over it. Though there are a dozen groovy fake etymologies out there, based on all kinds of aboriginal languages, the simple fact is that the name probably comes from good old French, where 'haha' is apparently a word for 'unexpected obstacle on the way'.

So, Saint Louis of the unexpected obstacle in the way. Well, a big boulder in the road can test the patience of anyone, including saints, so I suppose that's all well and good. But what really matters is how somehow some stray punctuation turned the obstacle into a guffaw. Because (a) exclamation points in your community's name = awesome, and (b) belly laughs in your place name = double awesome. They seem to have crept in via cartographers unfamiliar with the 'obstacle' meaning of the word 'haha'. I suppose they saw the name "Saint-Louis-du-Haha" and thought, "these poor villagers have no idea how to punctuate onomatopoeia". Or perhaps not.

In other news: Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha! is home to 1408 people, who are called 'louisien' or 'louisienne', the Louis in question is also shrouded in mystery, there is also a river, a lake and (most awesomely) a pyramid in Quebec named Ha! Ha!, the Wikipedia page for the town has pages in Hebrew, Welsh and Silesian, and, lastly, there is also a community called "Westward Ho!", avec exclamation point, in the UK.

"Dingdong Dantes"

2009-11-25T12:00:00.000-08:00

(Note that this picture is intentionally the most unflattering faux-sexy picture I could find).

Mr. Dingdong Dantes apparently was born into this world as Jose Sixto Raphael Gonzales Dantes III, a name which is also pretty damn cool (especially the 'Sixto' part – remind me to invent a soft drink or a board game and give it that name). He is apparently one of the Philippines' highest paid underwear models (with such fine work as the one shown above) and, in addition, acts in and directs movies, makes music, probably also works in architecture and has discovered a few of the elements on the periodic table. Whatever. What interests us here is that apparently he goes by the name 'Dingdong'. His Wikipedia page makes no indication that this is a rather unusual stage name, only mentioning that at one time he called himself Raphael Dantes. Which is a nice name, but apparently not as good as naming yourself after, alternately, the sound a bell makes, the song Dorothy sings when the Wicked Witch dies, or a chocolate cake-like product made by Hostess. Because that's good nomenclature.

"Inky Mark"

2009-11-18T12:00:00.001-08:00

Okay, politics. Canadian politics. Dude was a hotshot in the two parties that preceded the currently-governing Conservative Party of Canada. Not my personal brand of politics, but dude was a relatively decent proponent of those parties' particular brands of populist conservatism: so decent, in fact, that he abandoned ship to another conservative party before they united under one broad umbrella. I say 'was' - he's not dead, but he's quite sidelined politically. All that manoeuvring will get you nowhere, my mother used to say.

Beside the point. The point is that dude's name is Inky. Well, of a sort. Wikipedia tells me his name is 麥鼎鴻, or in Pinyin Mài Dǐnghóng, which is a pretty awesome name too. But in English he has an adjective for a first name and a first name for a surname, such that "Inky Mark" sounds like the nickname the schoolboys gave poor Mark Jones when his pen exploded on him one day. And that is truly awesome.

"Winnie-the-Pooh"

2009-11-11T12:00:00.000-08:00

Working on a pooh theme here, I know... very mature. But Winnie-the-Pooh (Disney gets rid of the hyphens) is a series of books specifically targeted (in a way that, for example, mustard is not) to children. In other words, the most potty-humour-obsessed people out there. It would appear that the Pooh part of the name either comes from a swan named "Pooh" spotted in a zoo by A.A. Milne's son Christopher Robin or (as described in the first book) due to the fact that his arms were so stiff that when a fly landed on his nose, he had to blow it off. "Pooh", I suppose, is an attempt at onomatopoeia then.

Regardless... 'pooh' also means 'human excrement'. And this it is a less-than-flattering name for a brown-coloured stuffed animal. I have no idea when 'pooh' entered the vernacular, but I acknowledge that certainly in 1926, when the series started, 'pooh' might not have meant, well, pooh. However, in 2009 it certainly does, and yet Disney continues to (very successfully) flog their scatologically-named toy animals. Strange how they've never tried to phase out the 'pooh' bit: in fact, Winnie-the-Pooh is sometimes known as 'Pooh Bear', which rather accentuates it.

"Winnie", incidentally, through a roundabout fashion comes from the city of Winnipeg. People from Winnipeg think this is a big deal. It rather isn't.

"Grey Poupon"

2009-11-04T12:00:00.000-08:00

Kraft makes this mustard. It's a kind of Dijon, which apparently means it has wine in it. I remember it best for the preposterous commercials featuring snooty people saying, "Pah-don me, do you have any Grey Poupon?"

Oh yes, that and its ridiculously silly name. I'm not too old for a little scatological humour, and calling your product "poop on" and expecting people not to go scatological is really asking too much.

Especially when your product is mustard. And mustard... well, have you ever changed a baby's diaper?

Mmmm... love those yummy condiments...

"FTSE"

2009-10-28T12:00:00.000-07:00

This one follows on a bit from the "Fannie Mae" entry of a month or so ago. Like Fannie Mae, it's something entirely opaque (to me) to do with economics. it is, I understand, a Stock Market 'index' rather like Dow Jones. Its name comes from an acronym of "Financial Times" and "Stock Exchange". All of this is so-far-so-boring, and would die that way if it were merely pronounced "eff-tee-ess-ee", as it by all right should be. But instead, oh those wacky economists, they figure their being cutesy (or "CTSE") by pronouncing it "footsie", as in the game of playing with someone's foot under the dining room table. So that economists can, with a completely straight face, say "the footsie went up today" and presume (wrongly) that they don't sound like morons.

"Emmanuelle Chriqui"

2009-10-21T12:00:00.000-07:00

This awesome name belongs to a Montreal actress who is currently gaining fame from TV shows I've never seen and movies I've never seen. No matter, what matters is her incredibly awesome name.

It's not so much the soft-core "Emmanuelle" that appeals, though that is in and of itself an awesome name, so much as the spectacular surname, which is pronounced "shrieky". That is pretty awesome by itself: like Itchy and Scratchy, Shrieky sounds like a great name, perhaps for someone who is easily frightened. But 'Chriqui' is such a fabulously exotic spelling of it, that results from her Moroccan Jewish heritage. it is, apparently, an Arabic word spelt according to French phonetics. Very cool, no matter how you spell it. Though it probably decreases your fans' ability to Google you if they can't spell you... "Megan Fox" is, for example, rather more straight-forward.

"Little Italy"

2009-10-14T12:00:00.000-07:00

It was my wife that pointed this out, and if it hadn't been for her I'd have never thought of it. The Italian neighbourhoods that sprout up in cities across the North America are inevitably given the name "Little Italy", just as Chinese neighbourhoods are inevitably "Chinatown". Never a "Little China" or an "Italytown" to be had.

But this is, of course, not the point. The wonder of "Little Italy" is in the amazingly mellifluous sound of its name, particularly if you have a North American accent that softens the letter 't'. If so, what you are saying is approximately "lidda lidda lee", a dance of the tongue on the roof of the mouth far more satisfying than Nabokov's description of the feel of the name "Lolita" on the human mouth.

J. R. R. Tolkein has made famous the phrase 'cellar door'. Beautiful it is, but I think "Little Italy" has it beat, hands-down.

'apl.de.ap'

2009-10-07T12:00:00.000-07:00

'The Black Eyed Peas' is actually a pretty good name for a hip-hop group. It's also, I guess, a good name for a whatever-they-are-now group. I'm not a fan, but they have an interesting story. In particular, the story of Allan Pineda Lindo, who was born in the Philippines to a black American father and a Filipina mother, who farmed sweet potatoes with his family, who was adopted by an American 'foster parent', who joined the Black Eyed Peas in L.A. All good stuff that'll make a good documentary one day. Certainly 'keepin' it real' in a way that a lot more posturing hip hop artists couldn't even conceive of.

And yet, the man has a damn stupid moniker. I get that "APL" is his initials, but it doesn't explain the '.de' (Germany?) or the 'ap' or the full stops in between or the all-lower-case or the question of how on earth you're supposed to pronounce it (it kind of looks like a url). In addition, will.i.am is a pretty stupid name. But apl.de.ap certainly trumps even that. Do people call him apl.de.ap on a daily basis? Do they call him 'apl' for short? Do people confuse him with Gwyneth Paltrow's daughter?

Note: as of a month after this entry, I've noticed that almost half of the visits I get to this blog come from people googling "How to pronounce apl.de.ap". Since the answer isn't really contained here, I'll have to add it - as best as I can. I can see a few websites that say that the first part is indeed as the fruit. So it makes sense for the third part to be a reduplication of that: app, as in there's an for that. That really only lives the second half, which could be 'day' as in 'midnight come and me wan go home' or 'dee' as in 'Dee Snyder'. So that leaves us with one of the two following pronunciations:

APPLE-DAY-APP or APPLE-DEE-AP.

Do with that what you will...

'Dog Vomit Slime Mould'

2009-09-30T12:00:00.000-07:00

I had the good luck to discover this charming species, Fuligo septica in taxonomical terms, when one of its less noxious but still unpleasant cousins sprouted up on my kitchen floor. Ick, and more ick.

A slime mould is a particular kind of mould that, well, is slimy. Apparently, hilariously, slime moulds can make their way through mazes and control robots - at least according to a creationist website I saw (if you ask yourself why i would be scouring creationist websites, you don't know how distressed I was by the thing on my kitchen floor). Mine was bright yellow and spongy. There is a kind of slime mould called 'scrambled eggs slime mould' because it apparently looks like scrambled eggs. Then, there's 'dog vomit slime mould' - which presumably looks like, well, you know - which takes vulgarity in nomenclature to a whole new level. Honestly, why is there no punk band out there calling themselved 'Dog Vomit Slime Mould'?

'Colorado Brown Stain'

2009-09-23T12:00:00.000-07:00

To make a long story short: somewhere in the United States (Colorado, I guess), way back in the day, it was discovered that kids had teeth that were stained brown in colour, and maybe even cracked and pitted, but had surprisingly few cavities. Through some miracle of warped logic, this was deemed a good thing and the kids were deemed lucky.

It turns out, to put the cart before the horse, that these kids were drinking water that was chock-full of fluoride. It didn’t take long before the government decided that kids everywhere should be as lucky as this bunch of Coloradans, so the fluoridation of water that is such an issue in “Dr. Strangelove” was born.

All because of a mystery condition that bore the spectacularly unlovely name “Colorado Brown Stain”.

'Praise-God Barebone'

2009-09-16T12:00:00.000-07:00

Ever heard of the Fifth Monarchists? No? Well, neither have I. Turns out they were around in the 17^th century and figured that the Apocalypse was imminent: namely, 1666. Obviously, they had egg on their faces in 1667. But it makes me happy to think that millennialist nutbars have hundreds of years of predecessors to look back on. The Wandering Jew must be ecstatic about it.

Anyway, they had a minor role in English parliamentary history when Oliver Cromwell went a little nutty, creating a republic (a ‘commonwealth’) and playing around with different kinds of government before just becoming a straight dictator. His last attempt had the awesome name “Barebone’s Parliament” not because it was particularly cash-strapped but because one of the MPs had the awesome surname “Barebone”.

Even cooler: a Fifth Monarchist (who was republican…), Mr Barebone bore the arse-kicking given name “Praise-God”. Apparently ‘phrase names’ were all the rage then.

Still cooler yet: Apparently, he was maybe possibly christened as, dig it, Unless-Jesus-Christ-Had-Died-For-Thee-Thou-Hadst-Been-Damned Barebone. It’s just a pity they didn’t have birth certificates back then. Or “Hello! My Name is…” stickers.

Note: whether or not Praise-God himself bore that name, his son, an economist, certainly did. Way, I repeat, way cool.

'Fannie Mae' and 'Freddie Mac'

2009-09-09T12:00:00.000-07:00

Oh, those nutty economists. Just how nutty are those economists? Well, first they set-up two drearily-named organisations that do things that I’ll never understand but that involve money. These were the Federal National Mortgage Association and the Federal Home Lone Mortgage Corporation. Perhaps as those names were tough to condense into 7-digit telephone numbers, they decided to give their acronyms cutesy pronunciations. So “FNMA” became “Fannie Mae”, which is better I guess than “Finn Ma”, what I would have come up with, and “FHLMC” became “Freddie Mac”, a stretch if I’ve ever heard one. I get the “Mac” bit, but “FHL” has pretty much nothing whatsoever to do with “Freddie”… perhaps they could have tried “Franhilda Mac”?

Oh well. Again, them wacky economists – what’re you gonna do? The thing is, though, that the FNMA and the FHLMC are so fond of their cutesy nicknames that they’ve actually rebranded themselves accordingly – ignoring the question of who would ever take a stuffed-shirt organisation seriously with a name that either is British English for ‘Vagina Possibly’ or sounds like the late Bernie Mac’s little brother.

No wonder they needed bailouts.

'Country-singing Merles'

2009-09-02T12:00:00.000-07:00

At first I wanted to nominate Merv Griffin, on the off chance that Mr. and Mrs. Griffin, some time back in the thirties or whatever, actually said, “Oh my God! It’s a boy! Let’s name him Merv!”

It turns out, however, that the Griffin family brainstorm actually produced “Mervyn”, a name which, while assuredly weird, is much more name-like than “Merv”.So on it goes to the Merles of the world. It takes a strong man to have a name that rhymes not only with “pearl” but also with “squirrel”, but for some reason fully three country-and-western singers have drawled their ways through life with the name “Merle”. And none of them decided to adopt stage names. All three of them are really Merles. So here they are, in all their glory:

Merle Haggard, an all-round awesome name that tops up the “Merle” with an adjective that means tired and rundown, and apparently has albums called “Swinging Doors and the Bottle Let Me Down” – pinnacles of nomenclatural awesomeness.

Merle Kilgore, the one I’d never heard of, though apparently he co-wrote Johnny Cash’s awesome country ‘n’ mariachi hit “Ring of Fire”, for which he’d always have a place at my table if he weren’t dead. Kilgore is an impressive name too, being a combination of two features of horror movies or, back in the nineties, an exhortation to assassinate the vice-president.

Merle Travis, the one with the plainest name and, based on Wikipedia’s assertion that ‘his lyrics often discussed the exploitation of coal miners’, the biggest dork. And to win a dork-race among Merles, well that’s saying something.

'Ougadougou, Burkina Faso'

2009-08-26T12:00:00.000-07:00

Just how sexy a city name is that? Ever since I was a kid, I’ve wanted to go to Ougadougou, just because I love it’s name so much. I mean, here is not only a kick-ass city name, but a kick-ass city name belonging to the capital of a country with a kick-ass country name.

Burkina Faso used to be called “Upper Volta”, which is kinda cute really. But it’s nowhere near as awesome as ‘Burkina Faso’, which apparently can be shortened to ‘Burkina’ in much the same way ‘Britney Spears’ can be just ‘Britney’. It’s that fab.

If you find yourself wondering whether a resident of Burkina Faso is a Burkinan or a Burkinite, both of which would be cool, the reality – Burkinabè – is simply way cooler. No idea how to pronounce it, but that grave accent where you’d expect an ague rocks my world.

When I was a kid, I figured it was pronounced “oo-ga-doo-goo” and always hoped that Hanna-Barbera would come out with a TV special called “Scooby-Doo in Ougadougou”. I was later a bit disappointed to learn it’s really “wah-ga-doo-goo”, vaguely like “wackadoo”, or in fact a bit like “cock-a-doodle-doo”. With time I’ve learnt to forgive les Burkinabè, however. And now I wouldn’t have my Ouagadougou any other way.

'Ball-peen hammer'

2009-08-19T12:00:00.000-07:00

Apparently, the ‘peen’ of a hammer is what the rest of us would call the ‘head’ of a hammer. The ‘peen’ of an adult male, is of course, entirely a different kind of head.

Which, in short, is what is so very awesome about this particular name. It is a lovely collection of cool terms for male genitalia all put together. And it’s something that you have to go to Home Depot to get, so that you can walk in wearing a manly man-apron and ask the guy there to show you where they keep their ball-peens. And he’ll show you, without even cracking a smile. That’s just how manly he is.

'Kumquat'

2009-08-12T12:00:00.000-07:00

The world is filled with fun, exciting fruit. Few, however, have a name quite as awesome as ‘kumquat’. Apparently, it’s derived from the Chinese ‘金橘’, which means ‘golden orange’. An odd name, to say the least, as a kumquat is precisely the same colour as an orange is: namely, orange.

In other news, gold is kind of a shiny orange itself, really.

I’ve never eaten a kumquat. All that matters is its awesome name, which is formed from one naughty word and very nearly a second naughty word, but somehow isn’t that naughty sounding a word. It’s just a cool sounding word.

Wikipedia tells me that genetic mutation has created two new semi-kumquats called the ‘limequat’ and the ‘orangequat’. While lovely words themselves, they bring with them the hope that ‘quat’ will one day be a stand-alone word.

Introduction

2009-08-11T12:00:00.000-07:00

I don't really have any special reason for doing this blog. I'm just bored and friendless.

Things With Awesome* Names

Kwakwaka'wakw

"Cardinal Sin"

"Anus Language" and "Anal Language"

"Vital Cliche"

Name-Change Petitions from 'The Smoking Gun'

"Poopó Lake" and "Lake Titicaca"

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