A new equivalent of "Joe Blow"?

Baker, John JMB at STRADLEY.COM
Thu Jan 13 19:57:03 UTC 2005


        Further to the mysterious surname "Blomee" and the AP news story beginning "STOCKHOLM -- On hundreds of websites worldwide, the messages are brief but poignant: "Missing: Christina Blomee in Khao Lak" or "Where are you?"":  I asked my nephew, a Peace Corps volunteer who assisted with the tsunami recovery in Thailand, and he responded as follows:

        <<Well, I do wonder about Christina Blomee, because I didn't see any signs for her and I was in Khao Lak.  I was also searching for Americans.  Of course, nothing says that she was actually American.  She could have been Swiss or something else.

I doubt Blomee is a Thai last name (Christina certainly isn't a Thai first name).  The "mee" part could be Thai, there are names like Boonmee, etc., but you never ever see the bl combination, except in borrowed words like "block".>>

        Of course, Blomee could still be, so far as I know, a legitimate European surname (presumably Swedish, in light of the Stockholm dateline), but the "blow me" theory seems far more plausible.

        Incidentally, I didn't give my nephew the dateline when I asked the question.  He knows the difference between Switzerland and Sweden.

John Baker



More information about the Ads-l mailing list