Light On Dark Water

What’s In These Names?

Just humor, I guess:

Allen Doss, Darron Tuff, Jan Fugg, Russell Fiery, Angelo Legend, Amy Haggis, Andreas Weeder, Jasen Foul, Adolfo Slaughter, Daron Matins, Seneca Zen, Curtis Isogloss, Curt Hubble, Shea Roo, Charles Heavy, Jamie Bovver, Brant Verve, Dominick Thrawn, Jayson Nil, Hassan Sass, Jamil Point, Doyle Dyke, Bennie Fleer, Moshe Fraud, Kimberly Waker, Martin Beth, Rex Pochard, Jeffery Croon, Louis Kauri, Kenneth Disc, Bryce Fedora, Scott Grocer, Marcus de Brief, Maurice Jar, Guillermo Balk, Andy Pitt, Sammy Gearing, Leon Brandish, Norman Purple, Harold Dazzle, Esteban Woolly, Jeremie Cue, Erwin Antics, Brent Clean, Brandon Fretsaw, Cristopher Homely, Paulo Sketch, Marlin Haymaker, Derik Cayman, Mickey Mustang, Loren Sequin, Jorge Pure

I've been trying out a writing tool called Scrivener. It includes a good set of word processing tools, but goes beyond that with tools for managing a book-length project. You can have lots of separate pieces of text, from a paragraph to a chapter or whatever, and move them around easily, and these components are not separate files but are all right at your fingertips. This is a bigger deal than you might think if you've never tried to write a book and had trouble organizing it. 

And there's much more. I think it's going to be a big help to me, but right now I'm still trying to adjust to it and figure out what it can do. Poking around in the menus, I found, several levels down, something called Name Generator. I looked at it and it's exactly what the name says:

ScrivenerNameGenerator

Of course I had to try it out, although I'm not writing a novel. And the names above are what I got. I couldn't understand why it would propose such weirdness for someone writing a novel. Then I realized that though I had set the first-name type to "Popular US Names (Male)," there is no corresponding list of surnames, so I checked "Potential  Dictionary Surnames." (There is a "Popular British Surnames" choice, and, oddly to an American, also "Popular London Surnames." I'll guess that it includes more non-English names.) I'm pretty sure no more than a third or so of these have ever existed in real life, though there is one that's only one letter off from that of someone I know. I suppose you might use some of them if you were writing some kind of Douglas Adams type thing. "Maurice Jar" seems un-randomly close to "Maurice Jarre". 

So if you ever come across a fictional character called Mickey Mustang, you can figure the writer used Scrivener. 

Maclin Horton
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14 responses to “What’s In These Names?”

  1. Anne-Marie

    My first thought on reading that list was, “These sound like names made up for characters in a strange fantasy novel.”
    I read somewhere, I think in a letter from Nancy Mitford to Evelyn Waugh, a complaint about the difficulty of making up new realistic-sounding English names, in part because the real ones sound made-up. IIRC she gave Asquith as a perfect English name that no-one would accept if it didn’t already exist.

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  2. Mac

    I’ve dabbled in fiction enough to realize that inventing suitable and plausible names is surprisingly difficult. I don’t really understand why. But the existence of the name generator proves I’m not the only one who has the problem. And that’s without even considering the intrinsically preposterous English ones.

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  3. Rob G

    A friend of mine recently bought an old LP from the mid 60’s on which one of the vocalists is the Englishman Murray Head, who later acheived fame as Judas in the original Jesus Christ Superstar. I had not seen his name in years, so I googled him. Not only is Murray Head his real name, his actual full given name is Murray Seafield St George Head. And his father’s name was Seafield Laurence Stewart Murray Head.
    And here I am thinking that all those crazy English names that show up in Monty Python are just that — crazy made-up English names.
    By the way, given his vocal performance on JCS, and having never seen a picture of him, I’d always assumed that Head was black. He isn’t.

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  4. Mac

    And then there are the Wodehouse names. I’m skeptical that “Fink-Nottle” ever occurred in real life, though each of the names separately does. “Kegley-Bassington” is plausible.
    “Seafield” is certainly a new one to me. I still can’t get over the discovery that “St John” is pronounced “Sinjun”, or something like that. Wonder what they do with “St George.”
    I only ever heard bits of JCS. Even in 1970 it wasn’t my cup of tea.

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  5. Rob G

    I don’t think I ever listened to the whole thing, but when I was in 5th or 6th grade we listened to some of it in music class in school and even learned a few of the songs.

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  6. Robert Gotcher

    “By the way, given his vocal performance on JCS, and having never seen a picture of him, I’d always assumed that Head was black. He isn’t.”
    The Judas in the movie was black.

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  7. Rob G

    Interesting — never saw the movie or the stage show. I’m only familiar with the original recording of the “rock opera.”

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  8. Don

    I didn’t realize Murray Head sang in Jesus Christ Superstar – to me he’s the guy who sang One Night in Bangkok.

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  9. Don

    Brian Eno’s full name (according to Wikipedia – and wherever I saw it long before Wikipedia existed) is Brian Peter George St John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno.

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  10. Mac

    It’s not quite as weird as it seems. Apparently he was born (or baptized) Brian Peter George, and
    “In 1959, Eno attended St Joseph’s College in Ipswich, a Catholic grammar school of the De La Salle Brothers order. His confirmation name is derived from the school, taking the name Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno.”
    Or maybe it’s even weirder. Where is it the custom to make the name of your school legally part of your own?

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  11. Don

    I think it’s weirder – I never felt like I ever really belonged to any school – maybe because I did feel like I belonged at home.

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  12. Rob G

    “he’s the guy who sang One Night in Bangkok”
    Yeah, when that single came out I remembered his name from JCS. Don’t think I ever heard of him once in between.

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  13. Anne-Marie

    It’s not all that weird to choose as your confirmation saint the saint your school is named for. What’s weird to me is making your confirmation name part of your legal name.

    Reply
  14. Mac

    Right.

    Reply

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