Shandy-Lack revisited

[Dave Hause]

Sometimes, one wonders what parents are thinking when they name their
children.  When I was a cop in Illinois in the early 70s, we had a pair of
bank robbing brothers - Jesse James Dandridge and his brother Frank James
Dandridge and the front page of yesterday's local newspaper (Waynesville
Daily Guide) reports a Jesse James Donaldson arrested for forgery.
Dave Hause, dwhause at jobe.net
Ft. Leonard Wood, MO
----- Original Message -----
From: "George Thompson" <george.thompson at NYU.EDU>


You folks doubtless remember the discussion a year or so ago of the
Shandy-Lack Theory of Onomastic Determinism, a hypothesis that a person's
life is determined by his or her name, first proposed by Walter Shandy in
the 18th century novel Tristram Shandy, and confirmed by the research of
David Lack, a British ornithologist, who observed a striking number of
ornithologists (other than himself) whose name was the name of a bird or of
a part of a bird.