What is the most on-the-nose or strangely objective name that you have heard?

Favrion@lemmy.world to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 127 points –

For example, I was doing research for a blog article and found a paper by a guy named Christian Messenger. That man was definitely destined for missionary work, but the paper was about football.

87

You are viewing a single comment
View all comments

These are called "aptroynms" and Wikipedia has a great list of them and also inaptroyms. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptronym

See also: Nominative Determinism. If I remember correctly, there was a subreddit about this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism

Nominative determinism is the hypothesis that people tend to gravitate towards areas of work that fit their names. The term was first used in the magazine New Scientist in 1994, after the magazine's humorous "Feedback" column noted several studies carried out by researchers with remarkably fitting surnames. These included a book on polar explorations by Daniel Snowman and an article on urology by researchers named Splatt and Weedon. These and other examples led to light-hearted speculation that some sort of psychological effect was at work.