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Roll Call

Unusual personal names collected by the Society for the Verification and Enjoyment of Fascinating Names of Actual Persons, listed by curator Allan Fotheringham in 1991:

  • Procter R. Hug
  • Polly Wanda Crocker
  • Sexious Boonjug
  • Philander Philpott Pettibone
  • Zilpher Spittle
  • Petrus J.G. Prink
  • Burke Uzzle
  • Pansy Reamsbottom
  • Dunwoody Zook
  • Bastion Hello
  • Fang W. Wang
  • Montague Tyrwhitt-Drake
  • Nimrod Spong
  • Dulcie Pillage
  • Jake Moak
  • Sir Tufton Beamish
  • Sir Basil Smallpiece
  • Sir Malby Crofton
  • St. Bodfan Grufydd
  • Hon. Sir Reginald Aylmer Ranfurly Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax
  • Sir Ranulph Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes
  • Selmer Hafso
  • Addylou Ebfisty Plunt
  • Oscar U. Zerk
  • Titus Cranny
  • Noble Puffer
  • J. Flipper Derricoate
  • Ovid Parody
  • J. Boxter Funderback
  • Middlebrook Polly
  • Lester Ouchmoody
  • Spencer Hum
  • A. Smerling Lecher

SVEFNAP founder Clyde Gilmour dreamed of assembling a golf foursome of Luke Feck, Bosh Stack, Fice Mork, and M. Tugrul Uke. “Gilmour imagined himself doing the introductions: ‘Feck, this is Stack. Stack … Mork. Mork … Uke. Uke … Feck …”

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Roll Call

Remarkable names of real people, collected in the 1980s by John Train:

  • Mac Aroni
  • Cigar Stubbs
  • Legitimate Jones
  • Halibut Justa Fish
  • Daphne Reader’s Digest Taione
  • Halloween Buggage
  • Eucalyptus Yoho
  • Solomon Gemorah
  • Asa Miner
  • Carlos Restrepo Restrepo Restrepo de Restrepo
  • Cranberry Turkey Breckenridge Jr.
  • Demetrius Plick
  • F.G. Vereneseneckockkrockoff
  • Rev. Fountain Wetmore Rainwater
  • Grecian T. Snooze
  • July August September
  • Lobelia Rugtwit Hildebiddle
  • Tarantula Turner
  • Theanderblast Mischgedeigle Sump
  • Theodolphus J. Poontang
  • Vile Albert
  • Welcome Baby Darling

Buggage had a daughter named Easter.

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Roll Call

Unusual personal names collected in Oklahoma by onomastician Thomas Pyles in the 1940s:

  • A. Noble Ladd
  • Beverage Porter
  • Bunker Hill
  • Charming Fox
  • Erie Lake
  • France Paris
  • Gunga Dean
  • Harness Upp
  • Harry Baer
  • Ima Goose
  • Jack Frost
  • Johnny Steele Casebeer
  • Liberty Bond
  • Pansy Leafe
  • Pearl Button
  • Rose Bush
  • Safety Reuel First
  • Winter Frost

Ima Foster and Ura Foster, possibly twin sisters, both received master’s degrees in education at the University of Oklahoma in 1943. “It has been suggested to me that most of the bearers of jocular names come of families in which infant baptism is not practiced, inasmuch as (it is to be hoped) few clergymen would consent to make a travesty of the sacrament of baptism by bestowing such names in christening.”

(Thomas Pyles, “Onomastic Individualism in Oklahoma,” American Speech 22:4 [December 1947], 257-264.)

08/15/2024 UPDATE: It appears Safety First became a cardiologist. “My dad gave me this troublesome title. We already had a junior in the family, so dad named me after the popular motto that had just been created.” (Thanks, Charlotte.)

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Roll Call

Unusual names of real people, collected by author John Train:

  • A.A.A. D’Artagnan Umslopagaas Dynamite Macaulay
  • Arizona Zipper
  • Atomic Zagnut Adams
  • Badman Trouble
  • Bumpus McPhumpus Angeledes
  • Cardiac Arrest da Silva
  • Cashmere Tango Obedience
  • Charles Everybodytalksabout, Jr.
  • C. Sharp Minor
  • Demetrius Toodles
  • Dennis Elbow
  • E. Pluribus Eubanks
  • Fortunate Tarte
  • Henry Will Burst
  • Pepsi Cola Atom-Bomb Washington
  • Marmalade P. Vestibule
  • Rebecca Hammering Bang
  • Roosevelt Cabbagestalk
  • Sara Struggles Nicely
  • Serious Misconduct
  • Trailing Arbutus Vines
  • Warren Peace
  • Zip A-Dee-Doo Daub

Twins: Anarchy and Utopia; A.C. and D.C.; Bigamy and Larceny; Pete and Repeat

Further odd names, collected from various sources.

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Roll Call

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dennis_Hart_Mahan_(West_Point_professor).jpg

More than 500 of the commanders in the American Civil War were West Point graduates, and all but a handful of these studied under the same military theorist, Dennis Hart Mahan, whose course “Engineering and the Science of War” applied the lesson of Napoleon’s campaigns — that the key to success was rapid maneuver to concentrate one’s forces at a critical point of weakness in the enemy position. (Of Grant’s encirclement of Vicksburg, Mahan said, “European warfare can produce nothing equal to it since the 1st Napoleon.”)

In addition to Grant, Mahan’s pupils included William Tecumseh Sherman, George Meade, George B. McClellan, Henry Halleck, George Henry Thomas, John Sedgwick, Ambrose Burnside, Joseph Hooker, and Philip Sheridan among the Union forces and Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, Stonewall Jackson, James Longstreet, Albert Sidney Johnston, P.G.T. Beauregard, John Bell Hood, Richard S. Ewell, J.E.B. Stewart, and William J. Hardee in the Confederacy. Historian James Robertson called him “the guru of the generals.”

(James Robertson, The Untold Civil War, 2011.)

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Roll Call

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_mounted_soldier_is_watching_the_roll-call_of_his_soldiers._Wellcome_V0048284.jpg
Image: Wikimedia Commons

A problem from the 2002 Moscow Mathematical Olympiad:

A group of recruits stand in a line facing their corporal. They are, unfortunately, rather poorly trained: At the command “Left turn!”, some of them turn left, some turn right, and some turn to face away from the corporal. Is it always possible for the corporal to insert himself in the line so that an equal number of recruits are facing him on his left and on his right?

Click for Answer
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Roll Call

In 1938, University of North Carolina folklorist Arthur Palmer Hudson published a collection of unusual African-American names, most gathered through personal interviews but others “unimpeachably attested” by state bureaus of vital statistics:

  • Comer Mercantile Company
  • Castor Oil
  • Morphine
  • Dr. Root Beer
  • Oleomargarine
  • Artificial Flowers
  • Elevator
  • Dill Pickle
  • League of Nations
  • Toledo Ohio
  • Positive Wasserman (after a hospital wrist tag)
  • Jesus Hoover Christ (“the family was a beneficiary of the Red Cross when Hoover was director”)
  • Jesse James Outlaw
  • James All Virtuous
  • Sandy Alexander Soap Fish and Tobacco Box
  • Susan Anna Banana Green Doosenberry Watson
  • Rosa Belle Locust Hill North Carolina Beauty Spot Evans
  • Frank Harrison President of the United States Eats His Lasses Candy and Swings on Every Gate Williams
  • Pneumonia and Neuralgia (twins)
  • Flat Foot Floogie
  • State Normal and Industrial College (“Snic”)
  • No Parking
  • Lake Erie Banks
  • Cleopatra Blue

In the 1850s, a Stanly County, N.C., slave was named Sunday May Ninth “to guarantee the bearer’s remembrance of his birthday.” “This name proved useful to the ex-slave in establishing his status with reference to a monetary claim.”

Hudson seems to have been enchanted by unusual names generally — among the UNC alumni he found a white student named Shively Dewilder Accus Baccus Dulcido.

(Arthur Palmer Hudson, “Some Curious Negro Names,” Southern Folklore Quarterly 2:4, December 1938, pp. 179-193.)

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Roll Call

Yet more unusual names of real people. Most of these are from the collection of Leland Hilligoss of the St. Louis Public Library, via Paul Dickson, A Collector’s Compendium of Rare and Unusual, Bold and Beautiful, Odd and Whimsical Names (1986). “As far as can be determined, all of the names are real and almost all were collected in North America and the British Isles”:

  • Magdalena Babblejack
  • Phoebe B. Peabody Beebe
  • Sibyl Bibble
  • Christian Bible
  • Hiawatha Cathcart
  • Tensil Cheesebrew
  • Adeline Dingledine
  • W. French Dingler
  • Ed Ek
  • JoAnn Floozbonger
  • E. Vercel Fuglestad
  • Cashmere Funkhouser
  • L.E. Vontilzer Gleaves
  • Felty Goosehead
  • Icy Macy Hoober
  • Zola G. Hooberry
  • Square Horn Jr.
  • Birdie T. Hospital
  • Elizabeth Hogg Ironmonger
  • Mingtoy Johnson
  • Epluribus Kitchen
  • Varnard P. Longhibler
  • Channing Manning
  • Duel Maroon
  • Luch V. Moga
  • Otis Muckenfuss
  • Lester Ouchmoody
  • Loveless Pelt
  • Grace Pinkapank
  • Evangelist Polite
  • Curt Puke
  • Burger Rocket
  • Melon Roof
  • Goolsby Scroggins
  • Norval Sleed
  • Craven Tart
  • Eloise Tittlekitty
  • Kong Vang
  • Gwendolyne Winklepleck
  • Clifteen Wooters
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Roll Call

More unusual personal names:

From John Train’s Remarkable Names of Real People (1988):

  • Ave Maria Klinkenberg
  • Gaston J. Feeblebunny
  • Humperdink Fangboner
  • Larry Derryberry
  • Mary Louise Pantzaroff
  • Norman Icenoggle
  • Primrose Goo
  • Rapid Integration
  • Verbal Funderburk

From Barbara Fletcher’s Don’t Blame the Stork (1981):

  • Bobo Yawn
  • Louise Ghostkeeper
  • Constance Stench
  • Naughtybird Curtsey
  • Rat Soup
  • Sir Dingle Foot
  • Consider Arms
  • Craspius Pounders
  • Gizella Werberzerk-Piffel
  • Barbara Savage Machinest

The most impressive specimens come from H.L. Mencken’s magisterial American Language. In 1901 Loyal Lodge No. 296 Knights of Pythias Ponca City Oklahoma Territory Smith was baptized in Ponca City, and in 1949 John Hodge Opera House Centennial Gargling Oil Samuel J. Tilden Ten Brink was interviewed for the Linguistic Atlas in upstate New York. I don’t know what he said.

| Language · Oddities

Roll Call

The taking of the United States census, now nearly completed, has brought to light some curious specimens of given names. A man in Illinois has five children, who have been christened Imprimis, Finis, Appendix, Addendum, and Erratum. In Smythe County, Virginia, a Mr. Elmadoras Sprinkle has called his two sons Myrtle Ellmore and Onyx Curwen, and his six daughters Memphis Tappan, Empress Vandalia, Tatnia Zain, Okeno Molette, Og Wilt, and Wintosse Emmah. The great number of persons surnamed Sprinkle in that county is given as the excuse for these extraordinary names.

— Notes and Queries, Dec. 10, 1870

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