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Nominative Determinism

My first-ever transistor radio (a red Regency), a grade-school graduation present in 1955, came from a long-defunct electronics firm in Newport, Kentucky with the wonderfully-Dickensonian name of "Hollub and Hogg."
 
Jamaican drug lord Dudus Coke has been in the news recently.

I'm convinced that a curious fatality attends our names. I think this applies not only to nominative determinism, but also to similar sorts of things happening to people with similar names. Our great mentor notoriously quipped "Is somebody collecting Ambroses?" when several men of that name mysteriously vanished. The actor who portrayed Superman in the original 1950's TV serial was named George Reeves, while the unrelated Christopher Reeve gained fame as Superman in a series of films. Interestingly, in Medieval times, a Reeve was a high-ranking peasant, charged with law-enforcement duties. Our word Sheriff (Shire-Reeve) derives from this. Perhaps through strange karmic channels, descendants of these early cops achieved superhuman crime-stopping powers.

I've also long noted that the name of the current American president neatly combines the names of the previous president's two chief enemies. Barack Hussein Obama seems to be a garbled combo of Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Ladin. Bin Ladin also seems to relate to the new vice-president's name, Biden. Riding my bike through my American city, I frequently mis-read political bumper stickers that say "Obama - Biden" as "Osama Binladin."

I suspect that some sort of extremely ancient, bumbling, ramshackle, machine-like entity is blindly orchestrating our existence, and that its operations, otherwise obscure to us, are somewhat revealed by these lexical anomalies.
 
This is pretty close!

World Cup 2010 is 'the tipping point for technology in football'
Refereeing errors at this World Cup now make the introduction of technology into football inevitable, argues Paul Hawkins, the inventor of sports monitoring system Hawk-Eye. ;)

...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/7 ... tball.html
 
min_bannister said:
It is quite common and was noticed by Jung. New Scientist popularised the phrase Nominative Determinism to describe it.
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Just came across another term for it - Aptronyms - in a book by SF writer Greg Bear.

And (wouldn't you know) Wiki has an entry for it, with loads of examples, eg,
Richard Chopp, Dr. Richard (Dick) Chopp is well known in the Austin,TX community for performing Vasectomies :shock:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptronyms

'Aptronym' has only been used once before on FTMB, not on this thread but here:
http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewt ... 786#199786
 
According to an online reference I found, "blatter" means "To prate; to babble; to rail; to make a senseless noise; to patter". The FIFA president, therefore, while not having a name specifically connected to his job, is certainly trying to live up to it, with his often pointless pronouncements.
 
So many of us have occupational names that it would be impossible that at least some "Butchers" would not be meat-cutters, and so on.

But I have a question - how "new" are the most recent occupational names? I've very occasionally run into references to people named "Steamboat," but have always assumed that these are stage or professional appellations ("Rick Steamboat," the professional wrestler, for example). And one of my own family names is the German word for "railroad." I assumed during my younger years that the name was obviously historically very recent, but since the coming of the Internet it has been traced to 1630 and - with a break caused by destruction of church records in a military campaign - to 1527.
 
OldTimeRadio said:
And one of my own family names is the German word for "railroad." I assumed during my younger years that the name was obviously historically very recent, but since the coming of the Internet it has been traced to 1630 and - with a break caused by destruction of church records in a military campaign - to 1527.
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The word "Bahn" (if that's what you mean, OTR) can also mean "way" or "lane", I believe.
 
I'm guessing OTR means Eisenbahn "iron road". Some of the earliest description of railways were of waggonways in European mines in the 1500s.
 
Timble2 said:
I'm guessing OTR means Eisenbahn...
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Ah - like Eisenbahn Kingdom Brunel*, you mean? Don't know why I didn't think of him earlier as a candidate for this thread!


"Eisenbahn", of course, just means "steel roadway".

Mind you, so do "ferrocarril", "chemin de fer" and"ferrovia", now I think of it. English seems to be in a minority insofar as it makes reference to the rails, and not just the material from which they're made.


*There are no excuses for that, I realise.
 
Timble2 said:
I'm guessing OTR means Eisenbahn "iron road". Some of the earliest description of railways were of waggonways in European mines in the 1500s.
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In Cornwall, wheeled mineral wagons were moved on 'Tramways'. The earliest tramways were flat iron plates with a vertical flange to stop the wheels slipping off. The wagons were pushed by men or pulled by horses. By the time steam locos came in the more modern 'railway' was in use.
 
Timble2 said:
I'm guessing OTR means Eisenbahn "iron road".
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Sorry to mislead. Not "Eisen" but "Langen."

Some of the earliest description of railways were of waggonways in European mines in the 1500s.
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It's interesting to note the things which we think of as quintessentially "modern" which actually have quite a history behind them. Such as the once-ubiquitous "computer" punch card, which was used by the US War Department as long ago as the 1870s.

Hint - this would make an interesting topic in itself.
 
I said:
Timble2 said:
I'm guessing OTR means Eisenbahn...
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Ah - like Eisenbahn Kingdom Brunel*, you mean? Don't know why I didn't think of him earlier as a candidate for this thread!


...*There are no excuses for that, I realise.
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Xanatic said:
His name wasn´t Eisenbahn, it was Isambard.
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Really? Are you serious?
 
As in the joke of a picture of the man in a local pub. it says "Isambard? Or can I have another?". :D
 
Very good! Then again, I've had my own (rather good, I thought at the time) pun ruined by pedantry, so perhaps I can do the same to yours by asking you to explain it, slowly and in words of one syllable...
 
I've got a friend who is good at that. she disconstructs my joke's so that they are simply not funny funny anymore!
 
Had a customer come into our repair shop a few months back named "Comunist Threatt"
 
Anconite said:
Had a customer come into our repair shop a few months back named "Comunist Threatt"
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Was he sent back to Russia on that plane last week?
 
gncxx said:
Anconite said:
Had a customer come into our repair shop a few months back named "Comunist Threatt"
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Was he sent back to Russia on that plane last week?
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Nah, they're all capitalists there now. Probably buying up your local industry/supermarket/football club as I write...
 
He was a very large, African-American man and it was his legal name (I had to see his identification when he paid)
 
Now that I think about it, what about Usain Bolt? Bolting is running away.
 
Once knew a pharmacist called Mr Pilling. Interestingly his son became a pharmacist also.
 
Mr Gale making a statement about tornadoes.

Power has been restored to most of the homes in Perth's northern suburbs where a mini-tornado has left a trail of destruction.

The mini-tornado hit the suburbs of Dianella and Morley around midday on Thursday, ripping down power lines, damaging homes and businesses, and uprooting trees.

About 5000 homes went without power for several hours but by 5.15pm (WST) power had been restored to all but 900 of these homes.

Eyewitnesses described the sound of the mini-tornado as "a tremendous roar".

Fire and Emergency Services Authority of Western Australia spokesman Alan Gale said about 85 homes had asked for assistance, mainly related to dislodged roof tiles.

About eight homes had been significantly damaged, Mr Gale told ABC Radio.

"They (mini-tornadoes) are more common closer to the coast ... but this one has come in a little bit further inland," he said.

"It's only gone about a kilometre in distance but it's wreaked a bit of havoc."

A mini-tornado also hit the town of York some 100km northeast of Perth but no major damage had been reported there, Mr Gale said.

No one was reported injured.
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-na ... 1zyai.html
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Can't remember if I've mentioned it before, but I once saw a doctor called Dr. Bone.
 
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