i was thinking on the way to work this morning about odd/funny/silly, call them what you will, people names. Real names, but just laughable.

at work we used to have a manager (lovely guy btw) called Eugene Organ. Of course we called him 'Uge' for short. Luckily his short first and surname never met too often...

and i think rugby player "Austin Healey" has a brilliant name...

come on...must be sooo many more

It's confession time folks. I had a breakdown in the mid '60s as a teenager and spent time in a "neurological centre" (and bloody primitive it was too). I was the youngest (to begin with) and certainly not the sickest by a long chalk. One poor guy there was regrettably named John Reason. And this huge greaser was called Bob Small, which is probably where his problem originated.

But as you see things worked out for me in the end and now I post here.

The principal of one of the schools in a town where I used to live was named Dick Smiles.

Most unfortunate...

There's a Dick mentioned in "Bull Session" on the Today! album, the unfortunately named Dick Reising!

In 1811 good old (bad old, old anyway) Napoleon decreed that the Dutch, whose land he happened to be occupying at the time, were to register their names. Being the Dutch, they thought up some suitably outrageous surnames for the occasion. Many of these are still around today.

Naaktgeboren means born naked and Niemandsverdriet nobody's sorrow (played draughts with a gentleman of that name). Then there's Bierenbroodspot (beer and bread dish), Dingemans (man of the thing, or what's-his-name), Kakbergen (mountain of sh*t), Pikkema (son of a dick), Uitdenbroek (pants off), Poepjes (little pieces of s*t) - the list is almost endless...

The Baltimore Orioles (baseball team) used to have an outstanding player by the name of Paul Blair. What's cool about that name is that if you do a Reverend Spooner to his name, you end up with how he made his living...

When I worked on the fringes of the music business in the '60s, the guy who ran our accounts section was an Indian called Mani - pronounced "money"...

Well we all thought it was amusing (not sure if he did)...

well, well, today i saw a book with a £2. price sticker on the front, so that caught my attention. Good job too...it title is "Potty, Fartwell & Knob" and is the "extraordinary but true names of British people"

and so i give you a few excerpts

Thick Burke
born ireland c.1791 (1841 census)

Dick Muncher
born Welshampton. Shropshire c.1838

Roger Rimmer
baptized St.Botolph, Aldgate 30 May 1658

Fred Pillock
baptized Shalfrod, Surrey, 3 June 1632

{Please tell one when to stop

And how on earth could we ever forget good old John Thomas?

Click on the link and what you may see first is "Loading John Thomas"...

And what to make of this one?

One fine example is staring at me from my wife's bookshelves, A History of Experimental Psychology by Edward G. Boring.

Of course, I can only see the spine, which just names the book followed by the word "Boring"...

This thread got me thinking about the names they gave to teachers at my old grammar school (the ones I haven't suppressed):

The Myth
The Loft
The Blob*
The Glowing Skull
The Craggy Bird

There was also "Bucket" Rigg (something to do with the shape of the poor fellow's head) and "Inky" Knight, whose hair, according to a school pal's father, really was jet black when he started teaching but had become snow white with age...

* A fine trad jazz pianist as it happens

I went to college with a young woman whose name was Sugar Sweet.

Now a girl bestowed with such a name will inevitably follow one of two extremes: she will either embrace her name and be the apotheosis of sugary sweetness, or she will become bitter rebel. I don't think human nature allows for any middle ground. I'll leave it up to you to decide which way she was...