Signature Style

In the 1940s, newspaper columnist E.V. Durling founded the My-Name-Is-A-Poem Club. Members included:

  • Hugh Blue, president
  • Jesse Lesse, Boston
  • Merry Berry, Chicago
  • Max Wax, Chicago
  • Hollie Jolley, San Bernardino, Calif.
  • Della Stella Serritella, Chicago
  • Jane Cane, Wheaton, Ill.
  • Newton Hooton, Cambridge, Mass.
  • Kenny Tenny and his daughter Penny, San Francisco
  • Dick Vick and his son Dick Jr., San Diego
  • Trudy Moody, Newburgh, N.Y.

Durling said his favorites were Nancy Clancy and Truly Dooley.

Here are a few more odd personal names, these from Elsdon Coles Smith’s Treasury of Name Lore (1967), “all names of real persons”:

  • Original Bug
  • Ephraim Very Ott
  • Gladys Whysoglad
  • Park A. Carr
  • Fairy Duck
  • Vito d’Incognito
  • North Western
  • Napoleon N. Waterloo
  • Tressanela Noosepickle
  • Osbel Irizarry
  • Athelstan Spilhaus
  • Weikko Tinklepaugh
  • Twilladeen Hubkapiller

According to Smith, Canadian broadcaster Clyde Gilmour founded the Society for the Verification and Enjoyment of Fascinating Names of Actual Persons (SVEFNAP) while working for the Toronto Telegraph. Gilmour died in 1997, though, I think, and I can’t find any record that the society survived. If you know otherwise, please let me know.

Point of Information

Sexauer is an ordinary German name referring to one who came from Sexau, in Germany. Looking for a Mr. Sexauer, a man in Washington called at the Senate Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee. Helping him, a girl employee called the Banking and Currency Committee by telephone to check, and inquired politely, ‘Do you have a Sexauer over there?’

‘Listen,’ the girl switchboard operator snapped, ‘We don’t even have a ten-minute coffee break anymore.’

— Elsdon C. Smith, Treasury of Name Lore, 1967

Classical Works

In 1989, the Finnish news service Nuntii Latini began broadcasting the news in Latin.

Not to be outdone, in 1995 Finnish literature professor Jukka Ammondt recorded an album of Elvis songs sung in Latin. It includes Nunc Hic Aut Numquam (“It’s Now or Never”), Non Adamare Non Possum (“Can’t Help Falling in Love”), Cor Ligneum (“Wooden Heart”), and Tenere Me Ama (“Love Me Tender”).

“Two years later,” writes linguist Mikael Parkvall, “he followed up the success with the album Rocking in Latin, featuring classics such as Quate, Crepa, Rota (better known as ‘Shake, Rattle and Roll’).”

Lewis Carroll’s uncle Hassard Dodgson rendered one of his nephew’s poems into Latin elegiacs. Do you recognize it?

Hora aderat briligi. Nunc et Slythæia Tova
Plurima gyrabant gymbolitare vabo;
Et Borogovorum mimzebant undique formae,
Momiferique omnes exgrabuêre Rathi.

“Cave, Gaberbocchum moneo tibi, nate cavendum
(Unguibus ille rapit. Dentibus ille necat.)
Et fuge Jubbubbum, quo non infestior ales,
Et Bandersnatcham, quae fremit usque, cave.”

Ille autem gladium vorpalem cepit, et hostem
Manxonium longâ sedulitate petit;
Tum sub tumtummi requiescens arboris umbrâ
Stabat tranquillus, multa animo meditans.

Dum requiescebat meditans uffishia, monstrum
Praesens ecce! oculis cui fera flamma micat,
Ipse Gaberbocchus dumeta per horrida sifflans
Ibat, et horrendum burbuliabat iens!

Ter, quater, atque iterum cito vorpalissimus ensis
Snicsnaccans penitus viscera dissecuit.
Exanimum corpus linquens caput abstulit heros
Quocum galumphat multa, domumque redit.

“Tune Gaberbocchum potuisti, nate, necare?
Bemiscens, puer! ad brachia nostra veni.
Oh! frabiusce dies! iterumque caloque calâque
Laetus eo!” ut chortlet chortla superba senex.

Hora aderat briligi. Nunc et Slythæia Tova
Plurima gyrabant gymbolitare vabo;
Et Borogovorum mimzebant undique formae,
Momiferique omnes exgrabuêre Rathi.

A New Man

In 1944, a San Francisco judge refused to let Tharnmidsbe Lurgy Praghustspondgifcem change his name.

He’d asked to change it to Miswaldpornghuestficset Balstemdrigneshofwintpluasjof Wrandvaistplondqeskycrufemgeish.

The man, whose given name was Edward L. Hayes, had requested the first change in order “to do better in my business and economic affairs.” Evidently he felt he hadn’t gone far enough.

(From Elsdon Smith’s Treasury of Name Lore, 1967.)

Three Cheers

In 1900 Edward Elgar invited three ladies, teachers of English, French, and German, to a rehearsal of The Dream of Gerontius at a Birmingham school. They sent him this letter of thanks:

My cher Herr!

We sommes so full de Dankbarkeit and débordante Entzücken and sentons so weak et demütig that la Kraft of une Sprache seems insuffisante auszüdrücken our sentiments. Deshalb we unissons unsere powers et versuchen to express en Englisch, French, and Allemand das for que wir feel n’importe quelle Sprache to be insuffisante. Wie can nous beschreiben our accablante Freude and surprise! Wir do pas wissen which nous schützen most: notre Vergnügen to-morrow, ou die fact, que von all gens Sie thought à uns.

We sommes alle three fières und happy, et danken you de ganz our cœur.

Elgar passed it on to the Musical Times, which published it, calling its form of expression “somewhat Tower of Babelish.”

Word and Numbers

Think of a number, write down its name, and add up the values of the letters (A=1, B=2, etc.). For example:

4 -> FOUR -> F(6) + O(15) + U(21) + R(18) -> 60

80 is the smallest number that is diminished by this procedure:

80 -> EIGHTY -> E(5) + I(9) + G(7) + H(8) + T(20) + Y(25) -> 74

Curiously, it’s also the smallest such number in Spanish:

80 -> OCHENTA -> O(16) + C(3) + H(8) + E(5) + N(14) + T(21) + A(1) = 68

(Remember that Spanish uses 27 letters, with ñ in the 15th position.)

(Thanks, Claudio.)

Nothing Doing

http://faculty.upj.pitt.edu/jalexander/Research%20archive/Dodgson_gallery_of_images.htm

In 1873, Lewis Carroll borrowed the travel diary of his child-friend Ella Monier-Williams, with the understanding that he would show it to no one. He returned it with this letter:

My dear Ella,

I return your book with many thanks; you will be wondering why I kept it so long. I understand, from what you said about it, that you have no idea of publishing any of it yourself, and hope you will not be annoyed at my sending three short chapters of extracts from it, to be published in The Monthly Packet. I have not given any names in full, nor put any more definite title to it than simply ‘Ella’s Diary, or The Experiences of an Oxford Professor’s Daughter, during a Month of Foreign Travel.’

I will faithfully hand over to you any money I may receive on account of it, from Miss Yonge, the editor of The Monthly Packet.

Your affect. friend,

C.L. Dodgson

Ella thought he was joking, and wrote to tell him so, but he replied:

I grieve to tell you that every word of my letter was strictly true. I will now tell you more — that Miss Yonge has not declined the MS., but she will not give more than a guinea a chapter. Will that be enough?

“This second letter succeeded in taking me in, and with childish pleasure I wrote and said I did not quite understand how it was my journal could be worth printing, but expressed my pleasure. I then received this letter:–”

My dear Ella,

I’m afraid I have hoaxed you too much. But it really was true. I ‘hoped you wouldn’t be annoyed at my etc.’ for the very good reason that I hadn’t done it. And I gave no other title than ‘Ella’s Diary,’ nor did I give that title. Miss Yonge hasn’t declined it — because she hasn’t seen it. And I need hardly explain that she hasn’t given more than three guineas!

Not for three hundred guineas would I have shown it to any one — after I had promised you I wouldn’t.

In haste,

Yours affectionately,

C.L.D.

“Inscription at Persepolis”

From Robert Conger Pell’s Milledulcia (1857) — “It is said that the following puzzling inscription was found by Captain Barth, graven on marble, among the ruins of Persepolis, and by him translated from the Arabic into Latin and English”:

http://books.google.com/books?id=yFACAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

Read the words of the top row alternately with those of any of the lower rows. Thus the first sentence is “Never tell all you may know, for he who tells everything he knows often tells more than he knows.” (In the last line, sees means sees into or comprehends.)