Onomastic Mastication

[steepholm]

Even making allowance for dramatic convention, it's always bothered me a little how few characters in Renaissance and Restoration drama appear to notice the eloquence of their names, especially given their near-universal obsession with wordplay. How could Sir Epicure Mammon, for example, ever hope not to be recognized as a worldly epicure the moment he announced himself? Was Sir Andrew Aguecheek fated from birth to be sickly, along with all the alliterative Agucheeks before him, or could he have shrugged off his fate by the constant application of good diet and callisthenics?

I know, I know, they aren't real people so the question is nonsensical - but given the effort that goes into making these characters appear real in many other ways I still think it a natural and non-trivial one. It's just this kind of irritant that provoked me in a former life to spend three years writing about Spenserian allegory, to the delight of all.

What about our names, though? I always felt sorry for John Craven, and for anyone whose surname happened to be Lipfriend. But some names are subtly ambiguous. For years, I thought of the name "Lance Armstrong" as an uber-macho one, rolling Sir Lancelot and Fortinbras into one. Now, I recognize it as a tacit admission of cheating - that he lanced his arm in order to become strong. Like Poe's purloined letter, Armstrong's confession was lying in plain sight, but few had eyes to see it. Perhaps characters in seventeenth-century comedies are suffering from the same problem? "Falstaff, you say? Is that Falstaff as in 'not really Welsh', or is that a dildo in your codpiece? Or does it, perchance, just happen to be your name?" The possibilities are endless.

Comments

[readthisandweep.livejournal.com]

How clever of you to see the reality behind Mr Armstrong's name. Ha!

My surname is Lovekin. (It is the only thing I insisted on hanging onto when I got divorced.) My ex-father-in-law (an amateur historian) always insisted John Lovekyn killed Wat Tyler. And that he could trace a direct line back. (No idea if this is true but it's a nice story.)

In fact, John Lovekyn preceded Wat Tyler's Rebellion by many years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lovekyn

Although there is a connection:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Walworth

In the later version of the name I like the juxtaposition of the syllables - the suggestion of loyalty & affection. It never fails to rouse a comment. And it's a good name for a book writer.

Nice post!

[karinmollberg.livejournal.com]

My fav. brunette here in France is called Blandine, the jokes are on her and evident.
In Germany people can be named absolutely anything, for instance, the http://www.ptb.de/index_en.html (where you can learn all you ever wanted to know about the dance of bacteria, for instance) used to have a certain Dr. Dr. (they love double titles, too) Wildschütz (usually translated: "Freeshooter") responsible for the Explosionsschutz (control of arms).
At the time when I worked there (shortly after the Wall had fallen by pure accident) as a telephone operator (we were no call-center) Prof. Dr. Hund (Dog) and his east-german equivalent: Prof. Dr. Sauerbrei (sour dough) were responsible for everything across the former border and talked about it on their bakelite phones.
Frau Pilz (Ms. Mushroom), our colleague on The Other Side used to ring us up once a day and then everyone had to connect to everyone else and never hang up because lines were not stable. Astounding as the names of such an institute of which I still keep a list somewhere, it reminds me I need to post on my PTB-experience what with meeting Einstein´s ghost in the internal wood; white hair standing up astray, hands folded on his back, mumbling formulas to himself.
He wore a white frock and there was a fence surrounding all of us.

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

I've always liked the metrical wobbles that proceed from replacing "Oldcastle" with "Falstaff"; surely it wouldn't have been beyond Shakespeare's powers to think up another three-syllable name, so I've always thought of it as a sort of metrical joke: a stumble from relying on a faulty walking stick.

[adaese.livejournal.com]

Twenty-five years ago I remember a spate of Ben Jo[h]nson, the Athlete's Alchemist jokes.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I had this conversation (in a limited way) back in college, in fact, it was a class on medieval life. I recollect wondering if the great Robert Grosteste got his name because his dad (or he) had big ones, or ugly ones.

Then there were all the Pigges and Piggots and Pinckneys . . .

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Collecting distinctively appropriate (or in-) names of people engaged in various professions has long been an amusing pastime.

Then there are near-misses. Why was the novel The Man Who Folded Himself written by David Gerrold and not by John Creasey?

I once read a poor novel set in Elizabethan times in which characters fall into fits of laughter on finding that another character is surnamed Hogg. Why? That's not an unusual name. And how much funnier it would have been if they'd ever heard of Sir Francis Bacon.

[larryhammer]

I've often asserted that my name is best-suited for the writer of hard-boiled police procedurals, especially if you initial byline it as L. Neil Hammer.

---L.