For this month’s Ten Things I thought we might have a bit more fun.
Over the years I’ve come across many strange, but perfectly genuine, names given to people. They range from the apparently ordinary (I once worked with a guy called Carl Marx) to the totally outrageous. Here are a few of the more outrageous.
Ten Remarkable Names of Real People
- About thirty years ago we had a vacation student working in our office who went by the name of Fanny Hyman …
- … which I think is one step worse than the friend of a former colleague called Simone Kuhnt.
- Of course these aren’t all people I’ve encountered. Some, like the charity worker spotted in 2003, come from media reports. This lady was called Patricia Titti; I just hope she isn’t known as “Pat”.
- Continuing in this somewhat dubious vein, I once played cricket against a guy called Jimmy Riddle.
- Or again, back in 2000, there was a Urologist at the Devon & Exeter Hospital by the name of Brenda Wee. Which I think beats the urologist by the name of Jack Cox who once treated me.
- Going to the more mundane, we shouldn’t forget the former English rugby player, Austin Healey.
- But why is it that the medical profession seems to have more than its fair share of odd names, like the Canadian medic, spotted in 2001, by the name of Prof. Lester Grimspoon.
- Although to be fair the Victorians had their moments too. Doing family history searches recently I spotted Leonardi Da Vinci Williams (died 1846 in Lambeth).
- Oh but there are modern ones too, like Summer Helps whose birth was announced in the Times in 1997.
- Nevertheless I’m almost totally convinced that first prize must go to Patriarch Moran Mor Ignatius Zakka I Iwas, Supreme Head of the Universal Syriac Orthodox Church who died in 2014.
And there are hundreds more where they came from!