If Friday is dragging, here's a little game. Pretend you're an eight year old boy who's just been told he can change his name to anything he likes. Think of the coolest, manliest, most ludicrously macho name you can possibly imagine. Got it? Well, whatever you've come up with, I believe I know of an Italian conductor from 1911
who can outdo you.
Haha, that made me giggle :D
ReplyDeleteNot so much a weird macho name, but my friend went to uni with a very posh bloke named Vaughan Vaughan. Sadly I can't remember his middle name but I think it started with a W - his name struck me as ... unusual, anyway.
Also: insomnia?
And then he became a conductor of Italian opera to balance things out...
ReplyDelete@Musical Lottie: Vaughan W Vaughan?! Did his less posh uni mates call him V-Dub, by chance?!
ReplyDeleteTalking of silly names, recently while trying to remember the name of a barrister I worked for, I searched law society records and man, you want to find ridiculous names that defy belief...that's the place. Grrr-Vroom's moniker would be positively tame in barrister company. I'd list some here but then they might be reading...
I have friends called Zack Rock and Kyle Power. I half expect them both to have superhero alter egos.
ReplyDeleteMy husband & I have come up with various silly names for our house, which is mid-terrace. 'The Belfry Mews' is so far our favourite, but we also like 'The Gables', 'Lake View' (there is no lake) and 'Poplar Row' (there are no poplars). We are considering using a different house name for each utility bill, just to make things interesting for the postman.
ReplyDeleteSheena: Think further afield. How about Prairiewood? Alpine Meadow? Hindu Kush? Cherry Blossom Manor?
ReplyDeleteWe have a relative who's name is Cornwall Chrystal Martin. What were his parents thinking?
ReplyDeletellamedos :-P
ReplyDeleteHis uncle also wanted to be manly, but was a bit more hesitant about it.
ReplyDeleteIt would have to be something like Dick Manley-Worthington!
ReplyDeleteThat's the best I can think of! But we have a Brian's of Britain game going in Uni and we have 17 names!
offers brian the snail from magic roundabout, but of course he is french by origin
ReplyDeleteAny MST3K fans remember the many names of David Ryder from Space Mutiny, where Mike and the 'bots yell out the manliest names they can think of for the main character, like Blast Hardcheese and Large McBighuge? If they'd done an Italian version, Manno would definitely have been included.
ReplyDeleteChanging my name to Wolf-Ferrari tomorrow. And I'm not even an 8 year old boy.
ReplyDeleteThe thing is, when he was hanging around Wolves and Ferrari cars would not have been nearly as cool as they are now. So he was also a hipster.
My sister reminded me of Lt. Kirk Manlove, the police spokesman in my home town. We think that at least comes close.
ReplyDeleteMegatron "TNT" Eastwood is the best I can come up with
ReplyDeleteArthur Shappey!
ReplyDeleteSo funny !!!!! so strange !!!!that's a smile for the day !!!! thank you !!
ReplyDeleteThe 8-year-old (tom)boy inside me is extremely disappointed. I honestly didn't think anyone could top my guess of Butch McManpants.
ReplyDeleteOh and I'd been quite proud of the name Stallion Powerhouse.
ReplyDeleteWhat I want to know is, what on earth were you looking for when you found him!!!
ReplyDeleteStop procrastinating and get writing for the shows, although in mitigation, I know you, you'll use this whole idea somewhere for something really silly.
I've never forgotten the time lag on the otters!!!!
Am I the only one who minds when straight to the amazing Monty Python's Life of Brian scene and THE most laddish joke name; Biggus Dickus. I'm slightly ashamed.
ReplyDeleteActually, Cornwall Crystal Martin was my Dad's college roommate. He embodied everything the name inferred.
ReplyDeleteWe used to live in Sarasota. There seemed to be a plethora of doctors with interesting names there; Dr. Hoertz (my ob-gyn), Dr. Doctor, and my favorite- Dr.Royal Fink.
Wales win at grand slam, Mr Burling gives us all money, I wish
ReplyDeleteanon, hull
Max Power.
ReplyDeleteDick Allcock
ReplyDelete(Yes, that is a last name, and no, I'm not proud of myself)
I went to school with a boy called Trebilcock not Treblecock, I think that was how you spell it, was about 30 years ago, and yes his name was Richard. Right back to reading old posts and blowing up the plot pages, they are so brilliant, obviously
ReplyDeleteanon Hull
I thought at first he was a train conductor which was a much better profession for a man of his name.
ReplyDeleteI originally thought he was a train conductor. Being an opera conductor just makes the name more awesome.
ReplyDeleteMy grandmother once went to a Dr. Slipikoff (pronounced "Sleepy Cough")
ReplyDeleteOur house (not named by us) is "Little Gidding". Since our modest extension we've considered renaming it "Slightly Larger Gidding", but then we wouldn't be able to boast that TS Eliot dedicated a poem to it :-D
ReplyDeleteAlso, address databases always list it as "Little Giddings" however hard we try to alter them. What is a gidding, and why is it assumed that it must perforce be plural?
google
ReplyDeletehttp://www.thegiddings.org.uk/giddingshtmlfiles/ggmain.html
I wonder if Manno had a sister called Mercedes...
ReplyDeleteWhen you said conductor, I imagined you meant train conductor. I guess that if I was an 8 year old little boy, nothing would be more macho than that.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteSpartacus Maximilian Schwazenegger perfect name....but I knew a lad who was called Maximilian Ayers :)
ReplyDeletec'mon John you must be awake by now, how did it go???
ReplyDeleteWent to the gig in London last night - a wide-ranging and heady mix of hilarity, linguistic agility, charm, with the occasional heart-stopping touch of pathos.
ReplyDeleteFavourite sketches - hard to choose, but the Crufts one, the courtroom one (not as farfetched as one might imagine), the ?Felix Dennis one, the "awesome" one ...
actually they were all good.
thanks k8, looking forwards to the next one, just a tad worried about kilburn parkway station :-(, spot the hick from the sticks
ReplyDeleteanon hull
OMG! My granddad is called Joe Wolf-Ferrari!! Any relation? ;D Haha, that would be so cool! But I doubt it, seeing as he was born in Australia (to admittedly very crazy parents.. xD) and your manly Mr Manno was from Italy.. x(
ReplyDeletea wolf ferrari did marry in Devon in the 1940's, so could your grandad be a ten pound pom?
ReplyDeleteErmanno Wolf-Ferrari was born in Venice in 1876, the son of an Italian mother and a German father. Ferrari was his mother's maiden-name, which he added to his own surname in 1895.
ReplyDeletespeaking as a sad genealogy anorak the chances of them being related are therefore high, unless grandad or his parents decided to take the name for a laugh
apologies, many many apologies, but i really wanted to post this, and so i have
ReplyDeletewhich is benedict, which is the otter? you decide :-)
http://www.whosjack.org/time-wasters-cumberbatch-vs-otters/
you just couldn't keep it to yourself, could you? ;)
ReplyDeleteI love it!
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI've always been quite fond of the name Panther Thunderkick but Mr. Wolf-Ferrari certainly does take the cake.
ReplyDeleteAaaand now you're on his wikipedia page. :')
ReplyDeleteI love it when I post things while only half paying attention. Didn't mean to imply "Sleepy-Cough" as a masculine name, only a funny one. Lesson learned.
ReplyDeletecome on john, tell the rest of the world about the pasty rant, i love your rants, funny and sarcastic and they make you think
ReplyDeleteanon Hull
Ah, you have not looked at motorsport, where there's the Australian racing driver Will Power, while at the other end of the name you want scale, the wonderful Dick Trikle.
ReplyDeleteOn a totally different subject, what has happened to your Now Show item on BP? It seems to have disappeared from You Tube.
anon in hull cannot see it either, perhaps it has been removed for copyright reasons, sad face, farewell "captain written in lipstick"
ReplyDeleteZimbabwean names though are the best. They name kids after the emotions and circumstances of the birth. For instance we have "Gift", "Precious", and the once ubiquitous "Lovemore". Nowadays though things aren't so rosy, so we've seen an exponential rise in the number of "Loveless"s. But my personal favourite still is "pencil".
ReplyDeleteYou're on his Wikipedia page! =D
ReplyDeleteI was once in an opera by Wolf-Ferrari, and not a single person in the cast recognised my allusion to Wolfie Smith. What do they teach at the Royal College of Music these days?
ReplyDeleteAt least when I was in an opera by Lalo, a few of them spotted the Ray Davies reference.
I have a little house rebuilt on the site of a hideou, crumbling red brick flat-roofed Munitions Dump built by the Manchester Water Authority in the 1930's whilst blasting a deep trench to channel the water supply. The site has always been known as "the Dump" and so is the neat new slate-roofed stone building.
ReplyDeletePeople keep wanting me to change the name to something dignified like "the Lodge" but the only upgrade I will remotely consider is "Hovel Hall".. I LIKE living in the Dump, and as it is in a slight valley, one could even say I live down in the Dump. . .
I love it.It was a nice post.
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An ex of mine had an ancestor named Iron Garringer. Sadly, poor little Iron only lived to be two years old-- the weight of that name must have been too much for him!
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