Friday 16 March 2012

Grrr. Vrroom.

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.

58 comments:

Musical Lottie said...

Haha, that made me giggle :D

Not 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?

Kaitebon said...

And then he became a conductor of Italian opera to balance things out...

prwelly said...

@Musical Lottie: Vaughan W Vaughan?! Did his less posh uni mates call him V-Dub, by chance?!

Talking 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...

Dave Shelton said...

I have friends called Zack Rock and Kyle Power. I half expect them both to have superhero alter egos.

Sheena said...

My 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.

Anonymous said...

Sheena: Think further afield. How about Prairiewood? Alpine Meadow? Hindu Kush? Cherry Blossom Manor?

Sparrow said...

We have a relative who's name is Cornwall Chrystal Martin. What were his parents thinking?

Anonymous said...

llamedos :-P

Inoj said...

His uncle also wanted to be manly, but was a bit more hesitant about it.

consultingstudent said...

It would have to be something like Dick Manley-Worthington!

That's the best I can think of! But we have a Brian's of Britain game going in Uni and we have 17 names!

Anonymous said...

offers brian the snail from magic roundabout, but of course he is french by origin

emily michelle said...

Any 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.

Anonymous said...

Changing my name to Wolf-Ferrari tomorrow. And I'm not even an 8 year old boy.

The 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.

nivcharayahel said...

My sister reminded me of Lt. Kirk Manlove, the police spokesman in my home town. We think that at least comes close.

Anna said...

Megatron "TNT" Eastwood is the best I can come up with

Jojo said...

Arthur Shappey!

Laurence said...

So funny !!!!! so strange !!!!that's a smile for the day !!!! thank you !!

D said...

The 8-year-old (tom)boy inside me is extremely disappointed. I honestly didn't think anyone could top my guess of Butch McManpants.

Anonymous said...

Oh and I'd been quite proud of the name Stallion Powerhouse.

Jane Russ said...

What I want to know is, what on earth were you looking for when you found him!!!
Stop 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!!!!

Anonymous said...

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.

Pipit said...

Actually, Cornwall Crystal Martin was my Dad's college roommate. He embodied everything the name inferred.
We 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.

Anonymous said...

Wales win at grand slam, Mr Burling gives us all money, I wish
anon, hull

panaManga said...

Max Power.

Stu Beale said...

Dick Allcock

(Yes, that is a last name, and no, I'm not proud of myself)

Anonymous said...

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
anon Hull

Oddgal.Lisa said...

I thought at first he was a train conductor which was a much better profession for a man of his name.

Oddgal.Lisa said...

I originally thought he was a train conductor. Being an opera conductor just makes the name more awesome.

Emma said...

My grandmother once went to a Dr. Slipikoff (pronounced "Sleepy Cough")

LynneM said...

Our 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
Also, 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?

Anonymous said...

google
http://www.thegiddings.org.uk/giddingshtmlfiles/ggmain.html

Anonymous said...

I wonder if Manno had a sister called Mercedes...

Anonymous said...

When 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.

Ellie Hart-Davies said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Ellie Hart-Davies said...

Spartacus Maximilian Schwazenegger perfect name....but I knew a lad who was called Maximilian Ayers :)

Anonymous said...

c'mon John you must be awake by now, how did it go???

Unknown said...

Went 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.
Favourite 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.

Anonymous said...

thanks k8, looking forwards to the next one, just a tad worried about kilburn parkway station :-(, spot the hick from the sticks
anon hull

PoshToffees said...

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(

Anonymous said...

a wolf ferrari did marry in Devon in the 1940's, so could your grandad be a ten pound pom?

Anonymous said...

Ermanno 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.
speaking 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

Anonymous said...

apologies, many many apologies, but i really wanted to post this, and so i have
which is benedict, which is the otter? you decide :-)
http://www.whosjack.org/time-wasters-cumberbatch-vs-otters/

Cai said...

you just couldn't keep it to yourself, could you? ;)

I love it!

Annie said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Annie said...

I've always been quite fond of the name Panther Thunderkick but Mr. Wolf-Ferrari certainly does take the cake.

Anonymous said...

Aaaand now you're on his wikipedia page. :')

Emma said...

I 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.

Anonymous said...

come on john, tell the rest of the world about the pasty rant, i love your rants, funny and sarcastic and they make you think
anon Hull

Edward said...

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.

On a totally different subject, what has happened to your Now Show item on BP? It seems to have disappeared from You Tube.

Anonymous said...

anon in hull cannot see it either, perhaps it has been removed for copyright reasons, sad face, farewell "captain written in lipstick"

Kunal said...

Zimbabwean 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".

Anonymous said...

You're on his Wikipedia page! =D

Peter Stanford said...

I 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?

At least when I was in an opera by Lalo, a few of them spotted the Ray Davies reference.

Anonymous said...

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.

People 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. . .

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I love it.It was a nice post.

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Dominic C. said...

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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