NYT writer and blogger John Tierney recently staged a contest for people to submit the Worst Bad Name, and today he announced the “winner”: a lady from Cleveland named Iona Knipl.
(Well, the actual winner is the reader who sent in the winning submission, but you get the idea)
The real amusement comes from the comments, where people felt obliged to chime in with dozens of punny names. Though people sometimes claim to know people with these names, more often than not these are the sort of “FOAF” urban legend things that the folks at Snopes spend a great deal of time debunking. Among the so-called “real, I *SWEAR*” names are such classics as Lemonjello and Orangello, “Anna Rexik”, “Dick Hurtz” and so on. At this point it’s hard to believe that anyone really thinks someone named their kid “Dick Hurtz”, but, then, most Americans still believe Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11, so what do I know?
Dear Harvey, Pete, Barry, Kevin, and every other weathermonkey on Boston-area TV: Enough is enough. The fucking blizzard was THIRTY-TWO YEARS AGO. It’s time to stop trotting out the same blurry videotape of cars stuck on Rt. 128 that is older than some of the people who are actually on your broadcast, just so we [...]
It’s going to be a long two months waiting for the iPad to actually ship so that all the tech bloggers and their hangers-on will stop writing so much speculative bullshit about iT and turn their attention iNstead to some other thing that’s going to Change Life As We Know iT. Since you cannot click [...]
Please, please, PUH-LEEZE stop talking about “What do we call the last decade?” Nobody could come up with an acceptable choice ten years ago, and nobody’s going to come up with one now. “Aughties” and “Naughties” are contrived and stupid, and so is the very idea that anything wraps up all nice and neatly into [...]
my father once told me about two women named ima fish and ura fish.
*snerking at the fish sisters*
Okay, so I am not kidding when I tell you I went to summer camp with the Hooker sisters, Abby and Debbie. And a car dealer in the area when I was growing up was Bob Brest; the dealership was Bob Brest Buick. I later went to college with his daughter, whom I affectionately referred to as Lisa Boob. (I know, in these examples, the first name is irrelevant and they were stuck with the bad surnames regardless. Still, when you have one of those names, why name your business after yourself? Hell, why reproduce?!))
There was a doctor at my college’s student health clinic named Bill Christmas, and — really, truly — his wife was Mary. No idea about their children, but I always imagined that they were Whatiwantfor, Whatdidugetfor (both girls) and Itsalmost (a boy).
One of our local high school sells calendar dates – intended to get family names on in recognition of birthdays and anniversaries. One year some wise guy entered names like Amanda Hugginkiss, IP Freely, Yu St. Ink and several others. Everyone of the submissions made it on the calendar and it was the first year the calendars sold out. Every year since then, they’ve had to closely edit the entries.
OK…so it cost me $25 to submit all those names but it was so worth it!