As we spend yet another week under the cloud of coronavirus, I thought it might be fun to revisit funny names. We all need a break from the serious if we want to maintain some semblance of sanity.
Not that I'd know anything about that.
I got a lot of responses from last week's column that made me laugh enough to get some looks from people questioning my sanity. I definitely enjoyed hearing that Stanley G. Johnson had a great-uncle named Napoleon Bonaparte (known as Uncle Boney). I've known of a few Benjamin Franklins and George Washingtons, but this is my first French emperor. Now I really want to know if there are any Attilas or Genghis Khans out there.
Sharon Scott, a retired teacher, agreed that I should be Queen of the World (at least as far as naming goes). She told me, "I had one beautiful student named Trashela ... pronounced TRA-shay-la by herself and her mom. Mom, by the way, explained to me and the class that she was on drugs in the hospital after the birth when she chose the name.
"Another young man of my acquaintance years ago when I worked in Fordyce had a mother and father who were arguing, and the mother still in the hospital bed after the birth asked the father what to name the baby. Not caring in the least, the father replied, "Name yourself a son." So that poor child's name became Namayousefason."
This brings up one of the rules I would impose in my reign: Babies should not be named until all drugs are out of the mother's system. What may sound perfectly reasonable when on painkillers may just get your kid made fun of for life. Weasel and Armadillo are not names that allow one to remain under the radar, nor is Fanny Butts. I can hear third-graders giggling right now.
Others wrote me with names that seemed apt in one way or another relating to their jobs. Ricky Crook, for example, served as Cherokee Village's police chief. Of the name Crook, Michael Stanley said, "He's not one, but definitely quite the handle for a law enforcement officer." Crook was tapped last year to fill a justice of the peace vacancy on the Sharp County quorum court, which meant we got to see this headline: "Crook appointed to quorum court."
The jokes write themselves.
More than a few people drew my attention to Little Rock urologist James Headstream. Elsewhere, Ann Forest Burns is a former vice president of the American Forest Resource Council. Sue Yoo is an attorney specializing in property law. And Thomas Grieve is a funeral director in the U.K. One might argue that their career choices were influenced by their names. One also might worry that had my parents named me Christopher Columbus I would spend my life "discovering" what had already been discovered by other people and believing I'd reached a land I hadn't.
But no discussion of names could possibly be complete without the mention of some of my favorite town names. There are great ones around the nation (Boring, Ore.; Satan's Kingdom, Mass.; Whynot, N.C.), but we don't have to go far to find some names sure to register at least a few giggles.
When I was living in Jonesboro and attending Arkansas State University, I would drive home at least every few months to see my parents and do my laundry. On the way back, I'd always pass the Possum Grape exit sign on U.S. 67/167 and chortle a little. It most likely got its name from the wild possum grape, says the Central Arkansas Library System's Encyclopedia of Arkansas, but some locals say the unincorporated community "was named in 1954 following a disagreement on whether to call it 'Possum' or 'Grape.' A compromise was supposedly worked out, and the two names were combined." That idea is complicated by the appearance of references to Possum Grape in newspapers dating at least back to 1941.
Baxter County is home not just to Mountain Home, but to Monkey Run, which in the early 1920s had seven zinc-mining operations in business. It was originally founded as Pilgrim's Rest, but changed its name shortly after its 1872 founding. The Encyclopedia of Arkansas notes there are at least three stories about the change, all involving a local shopkeeper. In one, he chased boys away from the store while yelling, "watch them monkeys run"; in the second, the boys refer to the shopkeeper, saying, "Make the old monkey run and chase us." In the third, the shopkeeper was showering his love with so many gifts that his frequent restocking trips were noted by locals as "There goes the old monkey on his run."
Hey, if you have a funny name, ya gotta have a story.
One of my favorite Arkansas town names doesn't sound that funny till you remember that so many of us replaced some cuss words with "flippin'" when we were kids so we wouldn't get in trouble.
There's no funny origin story here for the name, which came from Thomas H. Flippin (though it was for a time apparently called Goatville; that's another story). However, when you have a name like that, it can result in some (maybe) unintentional humor, and my favorite church sign.
Flippin Church of God, anyone? Mind that bolt of lightning.
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Assistant Editor Brenda Looper is editor of the Voices page. Read her blog at blooper0223.wordpress.com. Email her at blooper@adgnewsroom.com.
Editorial on 03/11/2020