Sunday, October 28, 2007

Its All in a Name ..

A coupled called their new son ANDERSON PLAYFAIR WORT as given names - their surname was something innocuous. Isn't this all getting out of hand? I know it is not as bad as Stu Pid or Chris P. Cream or Jack Mehoff or Ima Cumming (all real names), but really.

Mind you. there are some odd place names. Like Climax (Saskatchewan), which really should be near Fucking in Austria (32 km north of Salzburg) and is already quite a way form Hellhole Bay (South Carolina).

The names bands give themselves are also an interesting topic for some sociologist to get their teeth into. Like these: Penis Flytrap or the Squirrel Nut Zippers. Mind you, a band once named themselves after me The Murgatroyd's (its a long story).

Thinking of language, about the first page I check in the Saturday Globe and Mail (a Toronto newspaper that pretends to be Canada's national newspaper, as if) is the competition which focuses on interesting challenges in the book section. This week you had to change or add one letter to a known disease to give it a new meaning. The two that took my fancy were ALGOREOPHOBIA (the fear of yet another global warming lecture from this not entirely truthful former next President of the United States) and WHIPLUSH (injury to the neck from falling off a bar stool).

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