FN + LN

[Jonathan Lighter]

But the Diddley usage was not so flagrantly illeistic. There's Diddley, then there's the unnamed narrator of the song, then there's,"Diddley," a _possibly fictitious character_ in the song.

  I infer that Hassan was more directly and substantially influential than Diddley.

  However, as previously stated, I once saw a clear example from many, many decades agone.  Will report on any pre-'57s I notice, though the phenomenon, as stated previously, may be untrackably pre-Beowulfish,

  JL

Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Benjamin Zimmer
Subject: Re: FN + LN
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On 6/6/07, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>
> Back in the '50s there was a Bugs Bunny cartoon involving Arab anti-rabbit
> terrorists from the _1001 Nights_. Hassan carried a scimitar that he would swing
> at Bugs while crying, "Hassan CHOP!"
>
> Wackipedia notes that animation-industry insiders voted it the 35th greatest
> animated cartoon of all time:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Baba_Bunny

A more influential appearance of the dissociative third-person in '50s
pop culture was the song "Bo Diddley" by Bo Diddley (June 1955,
Checker).

Bo Diddley bought his babe a diamond ring,
If that diamond ring don't shine,
He gonna take it to a private eye,
If that private eye can't see
He'd better not take the ring from me.

This was followed up by other third-person songs such as "Diddley
Daddy," "Hey, Bo Diddley," and "Bo Diddley's A Gunslinger." And to
bring things full circle, Bo Diddley appeared with Bo Jackson in
Nike's "Bo Knows" commercials of 1989-90 ("Bo, you don't know
diddley!").

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bo_knows


--Ben Zimmer

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