"Dingdong Dantes"

(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.

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"Inky Mark"

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"

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"

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"

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"

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"

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.