FN + LN

[Jonathan Lighter]

Sorry, Charlie [is that a proverb?], but I for one don't associate the quirk under discussion with Nixon - aside from the single quotation - at all.

  JL

Charles Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Charles Doyle
Subject: Re: FN + LN
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So says the often accurate _Yale Book of Quotations_, and so the major newspapers reported in 1962

But the "Dick" is frequently inserted into oral quotings and paraphrasings (as well as later writings and reminiscences)--BECAUSE OF Nixon's tendency to refer to himself as "Dick Nixon" (as well as just "Nixon") in place of a normal second-person pronoun.

Without "Dick": 10,000+ Google hits.
With "Dick": 3,600+ Google hits.
Without "Dick": 78 Proquest newspaper hits.
With "Dick" 23 Proquest newspaper hits.

--Charlie
_____________________________________________________________

---- Original message ----
>Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 11:20:12 -0700
>From: Jonathan Lighter
>Subject: Re: FN + LN
>
>I thought it was only in "You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore" (1962).
>
> This all reminds me of the habit of some speakers, frequently guests on the Springer show, to refer to themselves by their first name in the third person for dramatic emphasis. E.g., Billy Bob (or Betty Bob) says, "But Billy [or Betty] is too smart for 'em."
>
> I believe I once saw an ex. of this from the 1880s, but characteristically neglected to write it down, assuming that many others had already done so and having other freedom fries to fry.
>
> It's a kind of usage that self-dramatizing folk have undoubtedly been practicing since _ante_ Beowulf, but it would be nice to have citations.
>
> JL

>
>Charles Doyle wrote:
>
>Dick Nixon, whom we were supposed not to have to kick around anymore, did that often--perhaps as a result of some dissociative disorder . . . .
>
>--Charlie

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