Essays - Great Names

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Louise Owen is a violinist of Broadway fame (Onstage in "the Dead" with Christopher Walken as seen on Tony Awards June 2000, and "The Producers"); chef extraordinaire; and posessed of an extraordinary memory for dates which is infallible.

Lara and her friend Louise are quite obsessed with names - of people, places, and other things, like dragons and stuff.

These are all names of real people which they have come across over the years.....Unless otherwise specified, they are just normal nice folks who are known to them or their friends.


● Temostocles Lopez (film director)

● Yolanda Squatpump (she is somewhere in the credits of The Usual Suspects)

● Irving Wankoff

● Belden Bumcrot

● Myrtle Seahamlet

● Marietta Clinkscales (Duke Ellington's first piano teacher)

● Cuthbert Girdlestone (Mozart scholar)

● Boggy Bramblet

● Clevie Youngblood

● Gina Colata

● Dong Dong Dong (Piano teacher)

● Fawn Wiener

● Roxandra Antonitis

● Edna Kleinsasser

● Cleora Channels

● Ellis Finger

● Emma Ziggenbein (Louise's great grandmother)

● Donalda Isabel Frayne (Lara's maternal grandma - I guess they wanted a boy)

● Homer James Jigme Gere (Richard's son - we particularly like the Jigme bit)

● Beulah Cox

● Karen Kokkendorfer

● Barbara Dooda

● Delbert Zimmerli (Louise's cousin)

And:

● Gweek (a town in Cornwall, England where the inhabitants are presumably called Gwecians)

● Bathsheba Crocker (who works for the Center for Strategic and International Studies)

● And, someone I met last summer, a guy who is half Dutch, and half Lebanese born in Canada named Tyl Odysseus Van Toorn.

This list was inspiration to many fans who submitted their own funny names by e-mail. A selection:

● Sir Basil Smallpiece (deceased former head of Cunard Lines) - by Dick & Jacquie Archer

● Lump Lumpkin - by Lewis M. Unger

● Lory Story, Dillan Pickle, John Stoner - by Chris Andrew

Courtesy of Marc André Hamelin:

● Oliphant Chuckerbutty (a composer who wrote songs)

● Buford Pusser (an actor)

● Marian Plumstead-Branchflower by Melanie Dyball

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