Comedian Soupy Sales spoke often of the legal firm that represented him: Dewey, Cheatham, and Howe.
I love unusual names. Laverne was Laverne DeFazio and Shirley was Shirley Feeney. When Shirley married in her final season, she became Shirley Feeney-Meany, which reminds me that in Murphy Brown the character Corky Sherwood became Corky Sherwood Forest. But back to Laverne and Shirley. They worked at Shotz Brewery in Milwaukee and Shirley’s on-again, off-again boyfriend was Carmine Ragusa. And who could forget Lenny and Squiggy?
Woody Allen says he had a childhood friend named Guy de Maupassant Rabinowitz, Geeda for short. I think Woody just made him up.
Tennessee Williams gave us Laura Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie and Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire.
I went to high school with a girl named Fredonia Musselwhite and her brother, Wayne.
I went to college with a girl named Tranquilla Furbush and her brother, Carlton.
From her younger days in Philadelphia, my mother remembered Violet Roach.
I know an English fellow named Alan Shacklock who says he can trace his family name back to the thirteenth century.
I got to thinking about unusual names again after viewing an episode of Forensic Files a few nights ago that featured Colin Pitchfork, whose name I had never heard before. Colin Pitchfork is a convicted British murderer and rapist. He was the first person in the world convicted of a crime based on DNA fingerprinting evidence, and the first to be caught as a result of mass DNA screening. His story, if you care to read it, is here. Forensic Files failed to mention that he has been in prison since 1988 and might be paroled in 2016.
The following person is (A) Carmine Ragusa, (B) Guy de Maupassant, (C) Colin Pitchfork, (D) Neville who died of ennui:
Do you know anyone whose name might be considered unusual?
