well_named e_o_i I was looking up some information for an article, and one of the first "space tourists" (people who aren't astronauts but pay, err, astronomical sums to go into space) was a South African computer entrepreneur and all-around rich guy. His name? Mark Shuttleworth. 140829 ... e_o_i William Wordsworth (poet). 140830 ... raze larry playfair (hockey player). 140830 ... e_o_i Cash the cat (liked pricier fish, not proletarian tuna). 140830 ... raze there's a former client of my dad's. she's one of those people who never stops talking. just wind her up and she goes. you can hint at needing to end the conversation six hundred times and she'll either ignore the hints or talk right over them. her last name? long. simple, but accurate. 170707 ... e_o_i The sprinter Usain Bolt. A man who used to write a column about birds for my local paper: David Bird. 170709 ... raze there's a tennis player named tennys sandgren. troubling twitter history, but the nomenclature checks out. 211027 ... epitome of incomprehensibility Poor old Ray Jackendoff. What did David and I notice about his name? Was it the "Ray" part, as in "a ray of insight on language and the mind"? Nah, it's because we kept cracking each other up with things like: -More work and less Jackendoff! -Will there be a lot of Jackendoff on the exam? It doesn't even sound THAT much like "jacking off"! But just enough... In sum, though we have the "going back to school in our thirties" theme, we must sadly renounce our claim to "mature" studenthood. 211027 ... e_o_i There's a historical linguist with the last name Babel. Mary Babel. 211221 ... raze there was a british neuroscientist named walter russell brain. 230528 ... raze honest to god, there's an attorney named sue yoo. 230806 ... raze when your name is christopher coke and you end up selling cocaine for a living, well ... that's serendipity, isn't it? 230829 ... e_o_i Unfortunately, I don't think the man I unwittingly insulted in things_you're_not_supposed_to_say was named Pepsi. (He worked for Pepsi.) 230830 ... e_o_i And Mary Roach, who tends to write about funny/weird science, doesn't seem to have authored a bug book. But - at least in her book Gulp - she pokes fun at other people's goofy or apropos names. I learned from her that there was a plumber named Thomas Crapper, but 1) he didn't solely specialize in toilets and 2) the word "crap" didn't actually come from his name. Didn't stop the folk etymology, though! 230830 ... raze someone called the house just now and hung up after one ring. their last name? "quick". 231003 ... raze there's a firefighter whose name is les mcburney. you can't even make this stuff up. 231017 ... e_o_i I talked to a Concordia student in Building Engineering - the only student I know who's in that program. His first name? Mason. 240330 ... e_o_i A linguistics classmate has a last name related to the Greek word for grammar. 240402 what's it to you? who go blather from