So I had the TV on just for background noise while I was working, and suddenly some TV doctor comes on and starts talking about how–if you feel tingling or heaviness in your legs–you may have peripheral artery disease, or P.A.D.
That got my attention. I looked up and watched in annoyance as the doctor proceeded to tell you everything you can and should do (including, of course, buying a particular product) in order to combat the terrible hazard that is P.A.D. And there’s my initials all over the commercial. “Beware of P.A.D.” “Know the early warning signs so you can avoid P.A.D.” “P.A.D., the silent killer.”
At least it’s not something that requires a rectal exam to detect. “Make sure your doctor sticks his finger up your butt to see if there’s any warning signs of P.A.D. in there.”
PAD
• 
I used to work with someone who was named Richard Head.
Some parents are just asking to be stabbed in their sleep.
When my wife and I were running through possible names for our daughter; I told my wife to close her eyes and imagine our daughter on the playground. If she was being beaten up, the name wouldn’t work.
–Rob
Queen Anthai-
Tragically, yes.
One of my grandma’s brothers (out of a whopping 11) was named Ðìçk with the unfortunate family name of Payne.
Seriously.
Dave S. wrote: “My mother’s defense? ‘They didn’t call it THAT at the time you were born…'”
My grandma uses a similar arguement.
Back when I was working for trade at Lee’s Comics, I would go through the back issue bins, and put everything in order.
This practice became known to the staff as “Chunging” the books.
Between this and Darick Robertson begining the graffiti in Transmet #14, I’ve never felt so honored in my life. 🙂
I was born at home, and my father after making sure that me and mother were ok, let mum know that he was off to register me as Allan Stephen Saunders. He didnt make the front door.
My First name is Ben.
I grew up (for the most part) in Dover, Oh.
Oh, if I only had a dime for every time I heard BenDover. HAHA. Never heard that one before. c’mere! I’ll show you bendover.
Wait, wait. My parents took to the habit (for whatever reason) of not calling me Ben, but by my initials: B.J. Yeah. Wooooo.
I made the mistake of allowing my father-in-law to find out that little tidbit.
I swear. One day when we’re scrambling to make the tuition payment at Harvard for my daughter…he is sooooooooo gone. (j/k)
“And I think I should have gotten a raise for keeping a straight face the day I made a deposit for a woman with the unfortunate surname of “Glasscock”.”
Was she married to a guy named Harry?
(OK, cheap joke…)
I work in the student loan industry and every now and then someone will come across a rather interesting and colorful name. However, since the ones that spring to mind at the moment are still borrowers (and our workplace has gone overboard crazy nuts over privacy issues) I am afraid I will have to refrain from naming actual names. You’d also be surprised at how many superhero secret identities that are out there as real names…
When my wife and I were running through possible names for our daughter; I told my wife to close her eyes and imagine our daughter on the playground. If she was being beaten up, the name wouldn’t work.
That’s a good test, sure. I like another one as well, namely this: consider the name being used in these two sentences.
1) “And here to accept this year’s Nobel Prize in medicine is …”
or
2) “Okay, put your hands together and give a warm Lusty Beaver Club welcome to …”
If it fits better in sentence 2, don’t use it.
TWL
A disease?
That’s nothing. Back in the 80s and early 90s, the 1-800 number for the National Institute of Mental Health was 1-800-MAT-TDOW.
They changed it, I don’t know why, I only pranked it occasionally.
Matt Dow
And, of course, if Ella Fitzgerald married Darth Vader, she would become . . . . . . . . (Insert Drum-Roll Here) . . . . . . . . .
ELLA VADER
I have personal experience with the following:
Manuel Labor
Al Kida
Golden Ðìçk (last name is Ðìçk, first name Golden)
Try having your name used as a movie title sometime, and spelled wrong to boot. I don’t know how much money that movie made, but obviously every person on earth saw it 10 times because 20 years later I still hear at least once a day “Oh, you mean like the movie..”. At least I was in collage and not elementary school when it came out
BB, I can relate. I’m a III (that’s a third, as in Bobb the Third). My dad is official the Junior in the family, but does he get the BJ nickname? Nnnoooooo. I do. Which is fine, until I get to be about 8 years old, at which time, thanks to my brother, who’s 5 years older than me, enlightens me that maybe BJ is not the best nickname a kid can have. Not only did it dash my then-aspirations to be just like BJ from BJ and the Bear, it was the only time in my life that I’d fly into a whirling dervish of “ataaaack!” when called by those initials.
So, from that point on, I was “Little Bobb.”
O, that’s so much better.
Moving ahead a few years, the best name I’ve come across was the lawyer for a respondent my then-agency was dealing with. His name was Ðìçk Wood. I wish I were making that up. And he insisted on not going by Richard. Every time I had to call his office, I felt like Bart Simpson.
Bobb: Yeah, it was cool back in the 70’s. Until, like you, my innocence was shot (pun intended?) down.
Here it is:
Hey there where ya goin’,
Not exactly knowin’
Who says you have to call just one place home.
He’s goin’ everywhere,
B.J. McKay and his best friend Bear.
He just keeps on movin’,
Ladies keep improvin’
Every day is better than the last.
New dreams and better scenes,
And best of all I don’t pay property tax.
Rollin’ down to Dallas,
Who’s providin’ my palace,
Off to New Orleans or who knows where.
Places new and ladies, too,
I’m B.J. McKay and this is my best friend Bear.
I knew an individual in school with the last name Duckworth. He claimed his first name was a family name that went back long before Disney, but truthfully, they should have ended the tradition.
a favorite out of the recent unemployment claims I’ve had:
Betty Beaver
contacts at the client locations I handle (hey! don’t take that comment out of context:)
Chris Glascock
Melissa Bøøbÿër
And if you look up urologists in Tampa you really will find a Dr. A Cockburn.
http://www.vasectomyreversals.com
Late to the party, but here’s my own ‘unfortunate name’ story.
I was in the military. I took a call to set up an inprocessing appointment for a new arrival.
“His name is Sherman,” the guy tells me. “Sherman Tank.” I bust up and he calmly reiterates the name.
I say “okay” and we go on with the call.
Later on, same guy calls up. “Who is it now,” I ask. “Tommy Gunn?”
“Man, he was sitting right here when I called,” the guy tells me. “I was trying so hard not to laugh.”
It was funnier if you were there.
I think I can do you one better than being a disease…
About a year ago I figured I’d see if I could track down any family members using the Internet. My last name is “Griefer”…fairly uncommon…how hard could it be? So I proceeded to google.
I simply googled “griefer”.
I got results that seemed to indicate that most of the world wanted me (and any family members who shared the surname) dead. And not just dead…they wanted us to suffer slow, painful, humiliating deaths. Results that said things like, “all griefers must die”, “griefers are the scum that scum scrapes off the bottom of their shoes”, etc.
Apparently, the term ‘griefer’ refers to, in the world of online gaming, a person who simply enters the game to do nothing other than kill people for no good reason. someone who isn’t interested at all in the game itself, but just exists to disrupt (I guess the equivelant of blog/newsgroup trolls).
I’m not a gamer (I play the occassional solitaire or minesweeper), so this caught me totally off guard.
so, you may be a disease…but at least the geeks of the world don’t want you dead 🙂
I should’ve included this in my previous post, but it’s simply unfortunate, not funny.
There was a man who would come into the office and knew that no-one wanted to call his name so he paid attention and would simply get up when it was his turn.
The last name nobody wanted to say?
Pussey.
He eventually got it legally dropped and just used his first and middle names, but how he made it thru basic training I’ll never know.
And while this link made the circuits quite awhile ago…the page is still up…a hospital’s birth announcement for the lucky daughter of Patricia and Ronald Justice…Aryan.
Aryan Justice?
Yikes.
On the other hand, Lisa’s cousin Bryan Hazard and his wife had their third child last year, and proceeded to name him Justice.
That would be Justice Hazard. Clearly someone with a career in either superheroics or supervillainy. To date, we’re not sure which.
(We do, however, think that either Bryan or Micky should change their name to Destiny, so that the baby can be “Justice, Child of Destiny.”)
TWL
That Chlamydia story sounds like an urban legend, because I swear I heard that same story before, except the girl’s name was Syphilis.
If you ask me, those are both lovely names, or would be if they didn’t mean somethine else. Just like Diarrhea. Think how pretty that would sound for a girl’s name.
This guy in my high school class had the last name of “Phoeuk.”
Pronounced exactly like you’re thinking.
How lucky I am depends on how you look at it. “Louis” or “Luigi” means “warrior” or “famous in battle,” and “Novi” IIUC, is Latin for “new,” so my name could be “New Warrior” (which would make it interesting if I were to break into comics on that title).
However, most people don’t look at my name that way, and hence, all throughout high school, I got people saying to me, “Hey, WHERE’S MARIO???!!!”
I swear that video game ruined my life.
“The last name nobody wanted to say?
Pussey.”
My second favorite exchange in “Goldfinger”–
“I’m Pussy Galore.”
“I must be dreaming.”
(My favorite, of course, being what I’m sure is everyone’s favorite from that film: “You expect me to talk?” “No, Mr. Bond! I expect you to die!”)
PAD
That’s “My name is Pussy Galore.”
Sorry. Purist. 🙂 (And yes, it’s one of the all-time best Bond dialogue moments.)
I always get a kick out of the way Connery pronounces the name as “Poo-sey” the rest of the film, too.
TWL
“That Chlamydia story sounds like an urban legend, because I swear I heard that same story before, except the girl’s name was Syphilis.”
Nope. There are cops in the Richmond area who can tell you that a girl is driving around here with that name (spelled Climittia.)
Never pulled over a Syphilis though……..
“Ninjas are still cool, right? Or are pirates the new ninjas now? I can never keep track. . . :p”
Depends on if you’re a fan of Shonen Jump manga. If you are, then they’re both cool. Along with Shamans and . . . people who play cards very dramatically. If not, it’s just a matter of personal taste.
“However, most people don’t look at my name that way, and hence, all throughout high school, I got people saying to me, ‘Hey, WHERE’S MARIO???!!!'”
I get something like that all the time at the place I work. It’s assisted living and the name Adam automatically sends the residents back into memories of “Best Loved Bible Stories” or something. I swear, if I have to hear “Hey Adam, where’s Eve?” one more time . . .
Anyway, I’ve run into one or two of these. While I worked at Taco Bell, there was an employee there named Mike Hunt. The female manager at my Taco Bell was rather dirty-minded, so she had fun with that.
The one I always remember best was one from literature, actually. You know how the meaning of words can change over time and all? Well, in high school, we had to read Oliver Twist. There was a character in there named Charlie Bates. However, Dickens seemed to feel a need to be very polite with his name and almost always referred to the character as Master Bates. Now imagine that name being read aloud in a ninth grade English class. Yeah.
An acquaintance from the Old Days (’70s) allegedly named his first child “Arturius Imbre B******”. Not that it makes a nasty abbreviation, but…
SF writer Alan E. Nourse, an MD (whose rights to the title “Blade Runner” had to be cleared when Ridley Scott decided that PKD’s original title sounded too dumb for a movie and renamed it “Bladerunner) did his residency at a hospital where there was another resident named “Dockter”. Nourse’s name was pronounced “Nurse”.
I understand the staff pages sounded a bit like something out of “Young Doctors in Love” — “Dr Dockter, Doctor Nourse, please…”
My brother went to school with a kid named Jet.
His mother claimed that if he had been born a girl, she was gonna name him Helicopter.
My mom went to school with kids named Fuchs.
Pronounced by the nuns as “FEW-cks”
But the one kid always corrected them and said it pronounced like ducks.
My Dad’s name is David A. Dow. DAD.
My dad once dated a women with the initials MOM.
My brother is Ben A. Dow. BAD. My brother’s wife was Beth A. Miller, but now she’s Beth A. Dow. And their son is Brenton A. Dow. You should hear their answering machine.
When my mom was pregnant with my brother, my dad wanted him named Godfrey Oscar Dow. Same when she was pregnant with me. Needless to say she didn’t go for it.
If I had been a girl, my dad wanted to name me Morgan LeFay Dow. I’m still not sure how I feel about that.
Matt M. Dow
Oh, and I graduated with Mike Rank.
Matt
Twenty-five years ago, I worked in a restaurant where the head chef was named Horr. One of the managers used to pick on him (they got along) because of this and he would respond, “I’m proud to be a Horr! I come from a long legacy of Horrs!”
One day he told a great story. His family had gone to get their pictures taken and they had to wait in a room with several others. Upon being summoned the photographer exclaimed, “All right, all you Horrs line up over here!” which brought the house down. Never forgot it.
“If I had been a girl, my dad wanted to name me Morgan LeFay Dow. I’m still not sure how I feel about that.”
So instead you’re the Mighty M. Dow. Just think if your last name had been Dowd instead.
PAD
My initials are the same as Disney’s California Adventure. I didn’t realize this (it’s not the sort of thing that comes up a lot, after all) until I started reading jimhillmedia.com and started seeing a lot of articles with titles like “More problems with DCA”…
I have to check online obituaries as part of my job. Two names have particularly stuck with me:
Mary Virgin (fortunately a married name, so it’s not her parents’ fault)
Golden Creamer (ditto)
(As an aside, there’s a moment in the anime “Aura Battler Dunbine” where the main character meets a woman named “Marvel Frozen” and says, “Oh, you must be an American.” I laughed at the time, but it wouldn’t shock me to discover a real person with that name by now…)
I used to work for a Richard Mann, who insisted on being called Ðìçk. Go figure.
I think my senior year English class was selected on the basis of having names the teacher could make stupid jokes with, like the obvious “Get it in gear, Mister Geers.” Although, among those others in my class, was a girl with the unfortunate surname of “Bangs” (whom, for the sake of anonymity, I shall leave first-nameless), thus leading more than one member of the adolescent male population of the school to come up with suggestive adult movie titles in the vein of “Debbie Does Dallas”. “xxxx Bangs Boston,” “xxxx Bangs Boise,” “xxxx Bangs Bangkok,” etc.
Working in HR at the local community college leads me across the occasional entertaining last names when going through applications. We have a Weiner teaching history and we had Rambo teaching English.
The funniest name I ever encountered was back in university days. While looking up someone’s phone number in the U directory, I came upon the name (unfortunately of oriental extraction):
Pisson Yick Moo Lee
I’m probably safe with JDK as initials.
Friend of mine used to work at the same company as a man named Harry Members. What’s more, my friend worked the reception desk and occasionally paged people over the intercom. Well, once Mr. Members was direly needed, but my friend decided he would be dámņëd before he was going to go over the intercom looking for Harry Members, so he paged “Harold Members.” Mr. Members was livid: “My name is HARRY! HARRY MEMBERS!”
It was funnier when he told me.
We have a Weiner teaching history
Well, that would pretty much stand to reason, wouldn’t it — after all, history is written by the Weiners.
TWL
I work with county property records around the Denver Metro.
One day I came across a death certificate for a woman named “Golden Rule”.
Was her married name, but still. 🙂
Clay wrote My girlfiend’s mother has a few very unfortuate children in her third grade class. Here is the phonetic presentation of my personal favorite…
Shu-THEE-ud
Is your girlfriend from North Carolina by any chance? One of the judges here told me that same story, with his sister as the teacher in question. Similarly, the two jellos mentioned by Jeff were reputedly in court in Hoke County quite frequently. I see three possible explanations: 1) urban legends, and we’ve all been had (cf http://www.namenerds.com/uucn/); 2) there is a large North Carolina contingent on this blog; or most frighteningly: 3) in this great country of ours, there are mutliple people stupid enough to name their children Orangello, Lemonjello, and Shìŧhëád. I fear the latter because, although Judge Brown is a prankster, I don’t think he was joking when he told me that story, and Orangello and Lemonjello were described to me by ADAs who claimed to have prosecuted them, who also seemed to be serious at the moment. According to this site (http://www.namenerds.com/uucn/advice/sightings.html) Lemonjello and his brother are still involved in the criminal system.
While we’re on the subject of the court system, there is a judge out of Charlotte named Richard Boner. Yes, his surname is pronounced with a long O (although some of the bailiffs are uncomfortable with this, and try to get away with opening court for the Honorable Richard D. “Bonner” instead), and yes, he does use the same nickname as fellow Richards Nixon and Cheney. He’s actually a really good judge, which shows that it’s possible to rise above childhood trauma.
It could be worse, you know. Try to imagine my horror when Bob Dole announced he was taking Viagra as a treatment for “E.D.”
Well, at least your name doesn’t come up first when you enter the word “failure” in the Google search engine!
They save that honor for someone else that we all “know and love” 🙂
David-
My girlfriend, her mother, and I are all from Atlanta. I can verify poor Shìŧhëád’s appelation from the mother’s word, but I strongly (or hopefully) believe that the gelatin twins are legendary. There’s some comedian who has adopted the alias Shirley Q. Liquor in a series of comedy tapes, and Lemonjello and Orangello are her fictional children.
Of course, the names could indeed have been inspired by reality. Like the jello kids you mention, Shirley’s children are constantly decribed as “guests of the state…”
This all gets less funny and more depressing the more I think about it.
Ah yes, the Harry Members story reminds me when I worked at the P.O. one of the bigwigs was named Harry Cox. No joke!
Your a disease to the hearts of Hulk fans everywhere. I can’t believe you quit!!!!
Unacceptable…
Your a disease to the hearts of Hulk fans everywhere. I can’t believe you quit!!!!
Unacceptable…
Your a disease to the hearts of Hulk fans everywhere. I can’t believe you quit!!!!
Unacceptable…
Oh, yeah. A disease that gave us over a decade of the best Hulk stories out there.
If you want to express your disappointment with Mr. David leaving the book, I suggest you do it in a way that is not insulting, as that seems to undermine your own arguement. If PAD sucks so badly, why on earth would you want him to continue writing the book?
…Oh, hëll.
I’m feeding the troll, aren’t I?
Oops. My bad.
Sorry, guys.