LITTLE did I realise when I first stumbled on it, but the subject of apt - and, more especially, inapt - names is clearly dear to readers' hearts. The examples continue to pour in. And I know now that there is a world of pain out there, much of it inflicted by thoughtless parents the day they first register their offspring, writes Frank McNally
There are those, as we have seen, who are blessed with perfect names for what they do. Su Pin - an acupuncturist in Terenure - for example. Or that assistant general secretary with the trade union Impact: the one who represents pilots and air traffic controllers. What's his name again? Oh yes, Michael "Landers".
Then there are two men called David Bird and Steve Wing, who I'm told both used to work as wardens at the Cape Clear ornithological observatory.
But for every one of those, there is someone on whom parents, marriage, or fate has played a cruel joke. I'm grateful to Jeannette Huber in Kinsale for a rather poignant example. Years ago in the US, she worked at a military psychiatric hospital where one of the inmates was a lady named "Ima Mae Queen".
Maybe this was not a factor in whatever problems she was in for. But as Jeanette says: "Who would ever do that to a female child?" Declan Foley in Sligo tells me that, in another hospital - St Bart's, London - he noticed once that the medical professionals on duty included a "Mr Coffin". We don't know what his speciality was. But would you even ask? And yet even these examples pale alongside some of the cases recorded in the books of Arthur Marshall and John Train, two specialist collectors of freak name specimens (thanks to John Meehan for the tip) - a resource in which the US is particularly rich.
For a start, spare a thought for a woman from Huron Country, Ohio. In one way, her parents were blameless, having given her the forenames "Mary Louise", both perfectly lovely and suggestive of a demure nature. The problem was her surname: "Pantzaroff". I'm sure the family were proud of it, as families are. But really, if her ancestors were not prepared even to amend it slightly - "Pantzarova" would have been a reasonable compromise - they should never have left eastern Europe.
By contrast, I suppose, two Michigan sisters called Comfort and Safety Bottom escaped lightly. As did an Indiana sister and brother, Rosie and Dewie Butt.
But pity the Iowa school-teacher, Iva Odor; or the Texas Health Department employee Lovie Nookey Good; or the Los Angeles psychology student Lobelia Rugtwit Hildebiddle; or a New Yorker of unknown occupation, Sugarporn Poopatana.
Some names seem to defy explanation. How did Sarah Struggles Nicely, from Clearwater Florida, end up so called? And what the hell were the parents thinking when - in Jackson, Tennessee - they named their offspring "Vaseline Love"? In certain cases, the damage is at least partly self-inflicted. Take "Mrs Belcher Wack Wack". It's true that before she married, as a mere Miss Belcher, she already had an image problem. Indeed, maybe when she married a Mr Wack, she thought his amusing surname would distract from her own. But you can take a thing too far. And when the first Wack died, she went and married his brother, taking his name too; as a result of which she ended up sounding like a duck with wind problems.
Some eccentric names can be attributed to an excess of religious fervour. This presumably explains a 17th-century London leather dealer and Cromwellian
called Praise-God
Barebones. And it surely explains the name of his son: If-Jesus-Christ-Had-Not-Died-For-Thee-Thou-Hadst-Been-Damned Barebones.
Perhaps inspired by his father's burning zeal, Barebones Jnr later established Britain's first fire insurance business. Unfortunately, the intended effect of his (very) Christian name was somewhat negated, when people took to calling him "Damned" for short. He eventually changed it to "Nicholas".
Other examples suggest the parents had just run out of ideas. This may well have been the case with the youngest of a family of 22 children in Maryland, whose name - "Pepsi Cola Atom-Bomb Washington" - suggests his mother was flicking through a news magazine before signing forms at the births registry office.
Sadistic doctors have been known to play a part too. Only this can explain the unfortunate fate of one Positive Wasserman Johnson, from Evanstown, Illinois.
A "Wasserman test" identifies antibodies associated with syphilis. And apparently it used to be a popular joke among US public health medics, when asked by some poor mother for baby-name suggestions, to propose calling the infant after the famous doctor, "Positive Wasserman". If the Hippocratic Oath were legally enforceable, that would be a war crime.
By contrast, some historic names suggest, if anything, too much pedigree. Adeline Horsey de Horsey, for example. One of the same Horsey de Horseys from which the 19th-century Tory MP Spencer derived, she is best known as the paramour of Lord Cardigan, to whom she broke the news of Lady Cardigan's demise by announcing: "My dearest, she's dead! Let's get married at once." And then there's the case of the British army major, Leone Sextus Denys Oswolf Fraudatifilius Tollemache-Tollemache-de Orellana-Plantagenet-Tollemache-Tollemache, who died in the first World War.
His name was almost entirely self-inflicted; albeit he was born a Tollemache-Tollemache, which suggests a latent family tendency to self-aggradisement. He was stationed for a time in Ireland - at Fermoy - and married an Irish woman with whom he had a son. But if he left any offspring with his surname, I can't find them in the Cork telephone directory. fmcnally@irish-times.ie