Truly Odd Names

There are some truly odd names out there! Here are gleanings from my reading, in most cases names that jumped out at me from the newspaper. Compare to the drab run-of-the-mill names that most of us bear, these names suggest how much unexplored fun, mystery and music remains in the language!

• Mister Alexander, a member of the Florida State University football team for fall 2006;
• Othniel Boaz Askew, who shot a New York City councilman in City Hall;
• J C Beaglehole, author of a respected biography of Captain Cook;
• Sweetest K. Berry, whose funeral service was held at the Tabernacle Church of Christ Written in Heaven, and who had a sister whose middle name was Flair;
• Dr Doctor Willard Bliss, who was, yes, a doctor, and the head of the surgical team that managed to keep President James Garfield from recovering from a nonfatal bullet wound by repeatedly inserting probes into the wrong side of his body in a pointless quest for the bullet, and then by insisting that he stop eating and only receive nourishment rectally.
• Boof Bonser, pitcher for the Minnesota Twins, born John Paul Bonser, but he legally changed his name in 2001, to Boofus Bonser - although "Boof" is acceptable in informal situations;
• Odd-Even Bustnes, described as "a principal" at the Rocky Mountain Institute, an energy research organization that has consulted for the Department of Defense;
• Todd J. Carpunky, a New York bankruptcy lawyer, and once a member of the Legionaries of Christ;
• Calvin Cedarleaf, director of sales for a west Florida real estate company;
• Etta Cetera, a Pittsburgh artist, professional protester, prisoner's rights advocate, who recently complained about a new policy that has prisoners kept in shackles during various court proceedings; alas, this is merely her "stage name";
• On a visit to the city of Jacksonville Beach, Florida, I saw signs urging the election of Bland Cologne for mayor;
• Lorne Dwight Conquergood, ethnographer mentioned in Anne Fadiman's "The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down".
• Scunner Carbbit, author of "Getting to Yes: a Brief Guide for First-Time Readers of Ulysses".
• Benedict Cumberbatch, a British actor in the movie "Starter for Ten", and now so much more.
• Edwidge Danticat, born in Haiti, has written two novels and a collection of stories, Krik? Krak!;
• Dazzle Deal, who wears a pink ponytail and has a son named Dillinger Deal;
• Sheila Dikshit, Delhi state's chief minister;
• Roger Dingledine, a computer scientist at Moria Research Labs;
• The Reverend Creflo A. Dollar, Jr., the pastor of World Changes Church New York, who preaches "total life prosperity";
• Taffi L. Dollar, a televangelist;
• London England, an 86-year-old radio and TV pioneer who died in a bus fire while fleeing Hurricane Rita in Houston;
• De'Cody Fagg, an offensive player for Florida State - that is, a player for the offense;
• Treasure Feamster, a 13-year-old innocent bystander killed during a gang shoot-out in North Carolina.
• D'Brickashaw Ferguson, an offensive starter for Virginia;
• Piper Fogg, a reporter for The Chronicle of Higher Education;
• Dingle Foot, more formally known as Sir Dingle Mackintosh Foot, was a British lawyer, politician, and member of Parliament.
• Sergeant FreebeeStore.com, the new name of Sergeant Cody C Baker, as chosen by FreebeeStore.com, the winner of the auction that Sergeant Baker had sponsored on his web site ChooseMyName.com, until the Marine Corps informed him that a federal law prohibits military personnel from making commercial endorsements. The runner up name, suggested by an online coffee company, was Sergeant Finest Freshest Fastest. As Sergeant Cody explains:

  From start to finish it was about 15 minutes in my head, and then I kind of started up the web site. I'm always thinking of story ideas, movie ideas; it just kind of came forth out of my entrepreneurial spirit.

  The New York Times, 13 December 2006.
• Verbal Funderburk, a name discovered by William Grierson who idly pages through phone books searching for peculiar names, as described by John McPhee in 'Oranges'.
• Jason Gardenhire, disillusioned student at a "basketball prep" school designed to give students good enough grades that they can be recruited by colleges.
• Peter Escherichia Gerba, son of University of Arizona microbiologist Chuck Gerba, and named for the "E." in "E. coli" bacteria, who told Dave Barry, "When you spend a lot of time taking samples on your knees in the stalls of public restrooms, people tend to call the cops on you." and who joked that if they'd had a daughter, she'd have been named "Sally Salmonella".
• Char Nita Harris and Joe'L Harris, sisters.
• Nathaniel Heatwole, who thought it a good idea to sneak onto airplanes, hide a box cutter, and then anonymously alert the authorities - who couldn't find box cutters, but could find him.
• Gerco Hoogeweg, an employee of a company that produces GIS software, and a person with a sense of humor.
• Jayne Houdyshell, an actress playing the role of "Mom" in "Well".
• Marycollette Hruskocy, a Manhattanite who spends her weekends biking in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, which itself used to be known as the inexpressible Maunch Chunk, Pennsylvania.
• Nguyen The Hung, an engineering professor in the department of hydraulics at the University of Danang.
• Michael W Hunkapiller, president of Applied Biosystems, and one of the inventors of a DNA sequencing machine.
• Joseph Icenogle, spokesman for Fidelity Exploration and Production Company.
• Bethelma Jeffcoat, Columbia, South Carolina voter.
• Rockhelle Johnson, a Florida State University student.
• Egil Krogh, the head of Nixon's White House "Plumbers" unit, charged with stopping leaks to the press.
• Loser Lane, sergeant in the New York City Police Department, whose older brother, Winner Lane, has over 30 arrests for burglary, domestic violence,and so on.
• Rose Lattus, homecoming queen at Highlands High School.
• Ffolliot LeCocque, nicknamed "Fluff", the stage director for the Las Vegas show "Jubilee".
• Bronze R Major, a student government candidate at FSU.
• Babaloo Mandel, a screenwriter for "Splash" who's disputing the credit awarded to Bruce Jay Friedman. Although he is well known by this name, it is actually a nickname. His actual name is the depressingly tame Marc Mandel.
• Lisadawn Marble, 30 year old Michael Jackson supporter.
• Reed McManigle, an Information Transfer Officer.
• Cummins McNitt, someone that Debbie went to college with.
• Harley Mellentine and Houston Mellentine, part of a family that moved from Detroit to Wyoming for work.
• Michelle Mock-Falcon, the casting director for the TV show "America's Next Top Model".
• Overly Monge, a Costa Rican baseball stitcher.
• Mertalaine Mulatre, Florida State University student.
• Welshman Ncube, head of a faction of Zimbabwe's Movement for Democratic Change opposition group.
• Daniel Mark Nosenchuck, a Princeton professor of electrical engineering.
• Teako Nunn, who owns an RV dealership, and recently bought a 25-foot tall fiberglass roadside cowboy statue.
• Casanova Nurse, a meteorologist on a Tallahassee television station.
• Oxide Pang, Hong Kong moviemaker, whose twin brother got the tame name "Danny".
• H. St. John Philby, British explorer of Saudi Arabia, and father of Kim Philby the spy; It's hard to know whatyou would call him if you were his friend. H? St.? John? Phil?;
• Philip K Philip, marketing manager for Hershey's.
• Kevin Pittsnogle, a West Virginia University basketball player; he and his wife recently had a child, whom they graciously named Kwynsie James Pittsnogle.
• William R Pulleyblank, a mathematician.
• Lucious Pusey, a player for the Eastern Illinois Panthers.
• ESPN Montana Real, newly born in Biloxi Mississippi, and named after the ESPN sports network and football legend Joe Montana, but preceded by ESPN Malachi McCall, ESPN Curiel, and ESPN Blondeel.
• Himler Rebu, Haitian politician.
• Venu Reddy, a student.
• Abcde Redford, a 5 year old, whose name struck a Southwest Airlines clerk as funny. He laughed, took a photo of her boarding pass and posted it, and got into trouble. And then there's first grade.
• Revilo Oliver, a conspiracy theorist.
• Brandon Ruckdashel, 23 year old actor in the Broadway play "Ascension", about the pedophile priest scandals;
• Tokyo Sexwale, underground member of the ANC in the '70s, a former politician and now a noted South African businessman.
• Todd Sickafoose, jazz bassist and head of a quintet.
• David Skillicorn, mathematician at Queen's University;
• Clydesmith Junior Smith, a distant relative-in-law, who was named for his uncle Clyde Smith Junior, and who goes by the name "Junior"!
• Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak, or, as the New York Times called her, Mrs Smolenyak Smolenyak, a professional genealogist who happened to marry an unrelated person named Smolenyak and decided to use both names to avoid confusion.
• Verbal Snook, chairman of the mathematics department at Oral Roberts University. One of the questions on the job application is "Do you speak in tongues?"
• Ben Snydacker, 21 year old sales assistant at Virgin records in New York City, who is discovering the difficulty of renting a nice apartment, a nasty apartment, or even a share in a nasty apartment with nasty roommates.
• Jonathan R Spicehandler, MD,, a specialist in infectious diseases for Schering-Plough;
• Eric Stockstill, Tallahassee real estate agent;
• Harry C. Stonecipher, retired vice chairman of Boeing;
• Major General Albert N. Stubblebine III, head of the US Army Intelligence and Security Command, who tried to replicate an experimental study in which a human subject was shown disturbing videos, and a corresponding reaction was searched for in a culture of the subject's cells, extracted earlier and kept in another room;
• Robert Stufflebeam, of the Mind Project;
• Meldon von Riper Stultz, generously tattooed attendee at Lollapalooza;
• Gregory D. Stumbo, attorney general for the state of Kentucky;
• Nello Tafi, father of the 1976 Leechburg High School Homecoming Queen;
• Napper Tandy, a recently married copywriter for the Saatchi and Saatchi agency;
• Cynthia Taratoot, Georgia voter;
• Zephyr Teachout, Howard Dean's director of Internet organizing;
• Kenyatta Q. Thigpen, former pimp and drug-dealer, who testified at a congressional hearing on troubled youth and inspired Laura Bush;
• Craphonso Thorpe, a wide receiver for FSU;
• Susan V Tipograph, lawyer and friend of David Hampton, who died recently, and was famous for pretending to be the son of Sidney Poiter, just mugged and cashless, inspiring the play and movie "Six Degrees of Separation".
• Summer Tissue, recipient of the "Community Champion" Jefferson Awards for founding a support group for military members sent overseas;
• Larisa Trimbobler, a Russian immigrant who wishes to marry Yitzhak Rabin's assassin;
• Alvin W Trivelpiece, a director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory;
• Chad Troutwine, an entrepreneur in Malibu, California;
• Quill Turk, a dentist in Panacea, Florida;
• Jazzmen Williams, a defensive starter for Boston College,
• Rex Wimmpy, in charge of Special Effects for the Jimmy Cagney movie "The Bride Came C.O.D";
• Cameron Winklevoss, one of the people who claimed to have been the real inventor of Facebook at Harvard.
• William Winkenwerder, Jr, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs (ASD/HA);
• Reality Winner, a 26-year-old former NSA contractor who pleaded guilty to leaking a classified report about Russian hacking.
• Pink Junior Wood, a councilman and barber in Anniston, Alabama, at least according to Rick Bragg,
• Dr Woffles Wu, of Singapore, who invented the Woffles face lift, which embeds barbed sutures under the skin;

We also understand that a staffer at Iowa's Department of Natural Resources named his three sons Hunter, Trapper, and Fisher.