Names With Zing

[Jonathan Lighter]

What would Uncle Miltie - I mean "John Milton," I always get them confused - have said about "Blossom Zlotnik," childhood friend of somebody I know?

  JL

Charles Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Charles Doyle
Subject: Re: Names With Zing
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Of course, Matthew Arnold lamented "the natural growth amongst us of such hideous names,--Higginbottom, Stiggins, Bugg" and (especially) "Wragg." And Milton cringed at some "rugged names," which "to our mouths grow sleek / That would have made Quintilian stare and gasp"--namely, "Gordon / Colkitto, or Macdonnell, or Galasp."

--Charlie
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---- Original message ----
>Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2007 16:10:23 -0400
>From: Wilson Gray
>Subject: Re: Names With Zing
>
>Until I got to high school, I had no idea of the full range of surnames available to white people. Some quite ordinary names, such as "Faherty," "Hoogstraet," "Yoch," "Zupez," and "Koziatek" (especially when combined with his first name of "Kazimir") initially struck me as so absolutely ridiculous when roll was called for the first time in homeroom that I nearly had a heart attack from the effort involved in surpressing my laughter. "Higginsbotham" was the strangest surname that I had previously encountered. And this was just one guy. In high school, I had to deal with hundreds of, to me, weirdo surnames at once. The white people living in the hood had names like "Adams," "Jones" (both of which are also quite common among blacks, of course) "Rohay," and "Rosen" and I was only six years old when I first heard them, long before I'd drawn any conclusion as to what constituted an "ordinary" surname.
>
>-Wilson

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