Futility Closet

What’s in a Name?

Posted in Language, Oddities by Greg Ross on December 26th, 2007

In the seventeenth century, André Pujom, finding that his name spelled Pendu à Riom, fulfilled his destiny by cutting somebody's throat in Auvergne, and was actually hung at Riom, the seat of justice in that province.

– William Dobson, Poetical Ingenuities and Eccentricities, 1882