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.

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I knew a guy who is called Gerard Menfroy. This is pronounced exactly the same as « J’ai rarement froid » in French, which means « I rarely feel cold ». He was Heating engineer.

I used to work in a call center and had a notably irate customer named Mrs. Bitschy. I tried pronouncing it like "Beeshy", and she immediately snapped "It's Bitchy! Got a problem with that!?" Oof.

My husband’s vasectomy was performed by Dr. Wiener.

Was his first name Xavier? Dr. X Wiener?

Lol, that would be sweet. He apparently did not have a good sense of humor. My husband is an identical twin, and his brother got a vasectomy from Dr. Wiener a week prior. So my husband walks in and says "Don't worry doc, you didn't screw up, I'm just the twin." The doctor barely looked up from his notes and said "I know."

Up until a few years ago there was a local urologist named Richard Chop, and Dr. Peter Ruff is still seeing clients. Nominative determinism is a thing.

The pilot on my plane a few years back was named Max Power

If my pilots name was Max Power we could be flying upside down and I'd still trust him.

I think he retired during Covid, but a nearby lasik clinic was run by Dr. Biglaiser. I don’t see how that could have been his real name.

This guy

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The text version of my comment is below. Isn’t this exactly what I did?

You shared a link to it, you didn't embed it. Which meant I had to click the link to see the image, rather than it just being in the comment. Like this

Weird, when I view it the picture is already there, I don’t have to click anything. I’m guessing it’s a federation thing since we’re from different instances. Does the ! at the beginning embed it for all instances instead of just my home instance? Like, is this one embedded for you?

This guy

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There was a trial against members of the NSU, a German extremist-right terrorist organisation, a few years ago and the lawyers representing them were named Sturm (storm), Heer (army) and Stahl (steel). In combination they sound like something a Nazi came up with to make them sound powerful and strong.

I remember reading about a military guy, Staff Sergeant Max Fightmaster. I have no idea what he actually does (or did; guy's probably retired by now) but if he hasn't at least spent some time teaching martial arts he's doing it wrong.

Edit: apparently he's a computer technician and that's even better somehow.

Gay Hitler. Worst part is he was born before those were offensive names or terms but lived long enough for them to get there meaning. Wasn't even meant to have the last name Hitler, It was a misspelling of Hiddler or something like that.

This is gonna sound fake, but I knew a butcher named Butch Pig. He was Butch before he was a butcher

Wolfgang Wolf was at some point manager of German club Wolfsburg!

I work in dairy company, once I was checking SAP for something and saw a name-surname "Olgun Erkek" (Mature Male in Turkish). We are receiving his raw milk, it is like porn name when you picture it like that.

I used to work in a call center and once took a call from a guy named Jacob J. Justice. Guy should've been a Marvel superhero.

I work in a 911 dispatch center, we used to have a frequent caller in our area whose first name contained the word "trash," and, well, they were trashy. We had cops there pretty much every day for some dumb trashy domestic bullshit.

Also took a call from a guy who's name was very similar to "Roger Rogar." Not his actual name, given the nature of my job I don't want to give out any potentially identifiable information about my callers, but same basic pattern, first name exactly the same as his last name except for one letter and, at least as well as I could hear over the phone, pronounced exactly the same.

Also a truly dumbfounding amount of girls named things like princess and diamond.

trash

Was it one of those commonly compounded first names like Marylou, Maryann, or Marytrash?

I went to college with a girl whose dad was a firefighter captain with the last name Justice. They actually did make a comic about him because he was a Captain of the firefighters.

I had a taxi driver once who's last name was snel. Which is Dutch for fast or quick or speed.

There's the newspaper columnist with the world's record highest IQ, Marilyn vos Savant. In French, you can read her name as "your (plural) scholar/scientist." When I was a kid, I was sure that it was a pen name, but it turns out it's actually her mother's maiden name.

I saw it as a kid and I was like:

  1. taaaaacky, and
  2. what kind of last name is vos?

Not sure if this is what you were going for, but I had a high school teacher named Mr. Student.

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.

There are several dentists in my area that have the last name of Beaver. They’re all related and it seems like the original one felt like that was too good of an opportunity to pass up on, and subsequent generations joined the family business.

In Germany there was a couple therapist named Von Hinten, which translates to From Behind as in doggy style. Last I heard she perished in the Christmas tsunami.

There's a meme image of a screenshot of a news broadcast featuring a fireman named Les McBurney.

This sort of thing apparently happens enough that it has a name: an aptronym.

happens enough that it has a name

I mean, anyone can stick a couple latin words together to name something, we've been doing it for centuries.

There is a AFL player called Patrick Dangerfield. Great player too.

When I was a kid, my parents were thinking about building a house. The name of the contractor who was helping them was named "Kari A Hammer." I might be spelling it wrong (I was eight), but that was his actual name.

I like to think he wanted to be a tattoo artist or something and hated carpentry, but was forced into it because of his name.

A dude named Sobriety Promise (both words were his first name). That guy's parents were assholes to name their kid that. Bro had to announce that his parents used to be drunk losers every time he said his name lmao. He went by his middle name and changed it as soon as he could. Poor guy. It's no wonder he became an alcoholic later 😐

There's a government spy project called Palantir. Kind of on the nose to LOTR nerds like me. For those who don't know, the palantirs were the crystal balls in LOTR that wizards could use to communicate or remote view what other palantirs could see.

My father went to high school with someone whose last name was Butts. His parents named him Harold and called him, and thus his friends called him, Harry. I always kind of thought it was a tall tale until my father showed me his high school yearbook one day And there was a picture of Harry Butts.

I always kind of wanted to meet this man and his wife and ask her if he lived up to his name.

gestures vaguely at Hideo Kojima's games.

In just death stranding, you've got Deadman, Heartman, Diehardman, Mama, Sam Porter Bridges, Fucking ameLIE, AKA Samantha America Strand... fuck

A lot of fictional and probably actors/actress names are gonna hit this mark.

irl people are harder to find like: Usain Bolt, Lucifer of Cagliari and maybe~ Rick Santorum.

Or there's that guy... Charles Dickinson. Maybe his name is objective too~

Rick Santorum

Not sure if serious...

(Maybe thats the joke)

e: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_for_the_neologism_%22santorum%22

And I just learned Dan Savage also coined the term "pegging". Maybe Dan Savage should change his name to "Damn! Savage."

Yup, you got it.

Santorum was the joke portion. I imagined like when teens yeet "Kobe!" but future people would then say "Oh, hey, there's an actual guy named like that... what a strangely objective name..."

Lol, if I were Dan, the best time for that would probably post mortem, so I won't have to deal with the potential confusion it brings.

Red Winged Blackbird