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?
