An idea from postings in another thread (the right thing to say):
What are the best examples people have come across of names that fit - or don't fit! - their owners' professions.
I used to live near a funeral directors which was called 'Wake and Paine'.
I knew a salesman called Cheatham and a lawyer called De Sevo.
Dr. Beavers, gynecologist
>Dr. Beavers, gynecologist<
VERY American, Jackie - I had to think about it before I understood it!
...and what's that you're always saying about people taking threads in the direction of the gutter?
>What are the best examples people have come across of names that fit - or don't fit! - their owners' professions.
While not exactly on point, when I was a kid growing up in Northern Virginia, there were two brothers with last name Murphy, one was an OB-GYN, the other a mortician. Though at that time the doctor could not advertise, many people knew that their preferred slogan was "From the womb to the tomb with the Murphy brothers."
A fired of mine who went to UNC law school a few years before my wife went there swore that there was a trio of law students trying to find a fourth with a particular name so they could form the law firm: Finder, Binder, Raper and Lever. I suspect it was the third they couldn't find.
Which reminds me of the possibly apocryphal headline after someone who had escaped from a mental institution raped some laundry workers:
Nut screws washers and bolts.
Bingley
>>Nut screws washers and bolts.
Ohmigawd! Oh, how funny! Multiple, munificent
kudos to you! My feet love this gutter!
On the little railroad my kid loves to ride the conductor is John Silvers.
I would cite Thomas Crapper, inventor of the flush toilet, as an example, but the euphemism for defecation came from his name. . .
Gosharootie, Tsuwm, how do you find these things??
Ohmigawd: the poopie pen???
>I would cite Thomas Crapper, inventor of the flush toilet, as an example, but the euphemism for defecation came from his name
The OED says crap comes from a Dutch word krappe. "The word has taken the sense of 'dirt, filth' and 'grease of a millstone.'"
>I had always assumed Thomas Crapper himself to be a myth
Neither myth nor inventor (or post Minoan re-inventor) of the flush water closet. There had been a number of attempts. of varying succes, to provide water-carried sanitation before Crapper. He is well known because he perfected a flush system invented by others, which was further refined over the nineteenth century. The main problems that beset Crapper's system was that it used an inordinate amount of water, in a time when water supplies to cities were not very good, and the valve was prone to stick, which meant that even more water was used.
If you really want to find out all about it, read
WRIGHT, Lawrence, (1960) "Clean and Decent: the fascinating history of the bathroom and watercloset" Routledge.
A very well written and interesting book which will tell you all about the debate over whether earth closets or water closets were best.
My own best examples of nominative determinism are a funeral director who used to have his showroom on Buckingham Palace Road, London. His name was D'Eath
Also, in the town where I was brung up, was a sanitery engineer (plumber to you) called "W.C.Drain"
My solicitor: 'Bull and Bull'
Come to think of it, the obvious examples are lead women in James Bond plots...
I just think it's jolly lucky that "Mr Antenna" grew up to be someone who sells, installs and adjusts antennae for a living.....
<lead women in James Bond plots>
they're the ones with the 'heavy roles', are they, Bridget?
lead women in James Bond plots>
they're the ones with the 'heavy roles', are they, Bridget?
Ooh, back to the gutter, she said with glee! Rolls of what,
paulb?
>they're the ones with the 'heavy roles', are they, Bridget?<
Not enough yeast in their dough, obviously.
(But at least we got a
rise out of Jackie
)