“The Wonderful Letters O U G H”

If your first line ends with cow,
Rhyme o w with plough;
Should your second nicely go,
Seek o long, as found in though;
Thirdly, would you try this too,
Double o is found in through;
Fourth, a variance we are taught,
Like an a u is heard in thought;
Speak you, fifthly, of a sorrow,
Give the o obscure in borough;
In the sixth place, you may pick up
Sound of u p in a hiccough;
Turn your seventh couplet off,
Assuming o f as in cough;
Eighthly, sing you of a rock,
Echo c k with a lough;
Ninth and last, and quantum suff,
Sound u f, and cry,–enough!

— I.J. Reeve, in The Wild Garland; or, Curiosities of Poetry, 1865

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Scales of Silver

The president of New York’s Tradesman’s Bank in 1829 was named Preserved Fish. The Fishes were a well-established New England family, and Preserved was a Quaker name that meant “preserved in a state of grace” or “preserved from sin.”

“The story that Preserved Fish was picked up on the shore of the ocean when a child, and named Preserved in consequence, is pure fiction,” reads a rather humorless 1890 history of the New York Chamber of Commerce. “His father’s name was Preserved, and it is highly probable that the same name was given to the son, in order to perpetuate it in the family.”

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On Target

Write out the names of the natural numbers in English: ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR, etc.

1 contains the first O, the first N, and the first E.
2 contains the second O.
3 contains the third E.

And:

11 contains the 11th E (onE two thrEE four fivE six sEvEn Eight ninE tEn ElEvEn).
24 contains the 24th T.
29 contains the 29th N.
31 contains the 31st N.
109 contains the 109th N.
199 contains the 199th D.
251 contains the 251st O.
454 contains the 454th U.
559 contains the 559th I.
1174 contains the 1174th O.
1716 contains the 1716th S.
5557 contains the 5557th F.
6957 contains the 6957th F.
15756 contains the 15756th F.
17155 contains the 17155th F.
24999 contains the 24999th Y.
43569 contains the 43569th F.
735759 contains the 735759th V.
1105807 contains the 1105807th V.
1107785 contains the 1107785th V.
1584504 contains the 1584504th V.
1707941 contains the 1707941st V.
1921567 contains the 1921567th L.

(Thanks, Claudio.)

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Officer Material

Three privates in the Army Air Forces caused some confusion when they showed up at the advanced flying school at Mather Field in California in 1942.

Their names were Admiral C. Allen, General Rudolph Merriweather, and Lieutenant Garnes. (Berkeley Daily Gazette, Oct. 8, 1942)

General L. Phillips and Lieutenant Tisdale were inducted into the Army (as privates) in Knoxville, Tenn., in 1952. (Lubbock Evening Journal, March 20, 1952)

“Private Colonel Underwood found it convenient to drop the title when requesting hotel reservations while on leave,” wrote Elsdon Coles Smith in The Story of Our Names (1970). “He would say, ‘This is Colonel Underwood speaking.’ It usually worked.”

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Words and Numbers

There are only six integers between 1 and 1,000,000 whose English names contain six letters: ELEVEN, TWELVE, TWENTY, THIRTY, EIGHTY, and NINETY.

As it happens, the same is true in Spanish: CUATRO (4), QUINCE (15), VEINTE (20), MIL UNO (1,001), MIL DOS (1,002), and DOS MIL (2,000).

(Thanks, Claudio.)

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Limericks

When you think of the hosts without no.
Who are slain by the deadly cuco.,
It’s quite a mistake
Of such food to partake,
It results in a permanent slo.

A young lady sings in our choir
Whose hair is the color of phoir,
But her charm is unique,
She has such a fair chique,
It is really a joy to be nhoir.

There once was a choleric colonel
Whose oaths were obscene and infolonel,
And the chaplain, aghast,
Gave up protest at last,
But wrote them all down in his jolonel.

— Anonymous

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Sentences as Names

According to the American Mercury, a candidate for the postmastership at Oceana, W.Va., in 1954 was named Please Wright.

Elsdon C. Smith, in The Story of Our Names (1970), reports that a Chinese laundryman in Thomasville, Ga., was named I Will Sing; that Chicago was home to one Christmas Hurts; and that Mr. and Mrs. James A. Buck of Clear Lake, Iowa, named their daughter Helen May.

Victor Fell Yellin taught music composition at New York University in 1961.

Smith notes that a Mr. and Mrs. Ira W. Ready of Nebraska named their son Ira Maynard; he used his initials only, as did his uncles, B. Ready and R.U. Ready.

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