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Lydia’s three-year-old daughter names her toys by herself. Some of the names are rude, crude, and socially unacceptable. But they make for a funny video, if you aren’t offended by adult terms in text. See it at NeatoBambino. Link
This adorable little critter is the newest addition to the Rosamond Gifford Zoo in New York. But it has a problem -the chick (whose gender remains unknown as of yet) still doesn’t have a name. That’s where you come in. You can submit two names, one for each gender and Spanish names are preferred. The zoo staff will narrow the selections down to five finalists and the public will get to vote on the official name. As for prizes:
The winner will receive a VIP tour of the zoo and will become the adoptive parent of the named chick for one year.
Any ideas?
The Old Thirteenth Cheshire Astley Volunteer Rifleman Corps Inn is a real tavern in Stalybridge, Cheshire, England. But it’s not the strangest name for a bar you’ll find in this gallery of ten at DJMick. Link -via Breakfast Links
I enjoy the challenge of trying to figure out when a world map was made by looking at the countries on it. That challenge is easier with a handy chart from Replogle Globes that tells what year nations came into existence or changed names. Metafilter, on the other hand, took the question and made a joke thread, with each joke trying to one-up the one before.
My globe is so old…
HOW OLD IS IT?
My globe is so old it still says “here be dragons.” On France.
The chart does not yet have South Sudan listed, but may someday soon. Link
You can find a Tumblr picture blog for almost any subject under the sun. Starbucks Spelling is dedicated to the custom of baristas writing a customer’s name on a cup, for which they sometimes get the spelling wrong. What makes this worth a look is 1. there are so many misspellings, and 2. how can anyone keep track of all the venti and grande lattes and espressos and then spell Joe G-I-O? Shown here are four different orders Omar recorded. Link -via Gorilla Mask
Although we know quite a few famous cartoon characters by first names or nicknames only – Casper, Shaggy, Scooby-Doo and Peppermint Patty, for example – many of them have “real” names. I mean, do you think Shaggy’s mom really calls him “Shaggy”? Nope, when mom calls, Shaggy answers to “Norville.” Buzzfeed has uncovered the full names of 24 other characters like this. Your mind will be blown.
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Today’s Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss challenges you to name the top 20 baby girl names for the year 2010. Now, we reported this at NeatoBambino a few weeks back when the list was announced, but referring to that would be cheating, wouldn’t it… however, those of you who keep up with all things Neato will have a head start. A commenter at mental_floss said she got most of them by using the names in her child’s day care group. You have five minutes: good luck! Link
National Geographic has a large interactive map of surnames in the United States. The most common surname for a given area is listed in each location. The relative size represents the commonality of the name, and the color represents the geographic origin of the name. Pictured above is a screenshot of Hawaii as it is depicted on the map. Where’s the most common name where you live?
Link via Flavorwire
The blog named Let’s Get Jiggy with Civil War Dudes! features individual soldiers of the Civil War, highlighting their magnificent names, their accomplishments, and their manly facial hair. Pictured is Cadmus Marcellus Wilcox.
He lived during a time when mustaches could be mustaches, and not simply a means to mask a scrawny hipster’s weak chin and acne scars.
Behold the awesomeness of Napoleon Jackson Tecumseh Dana, Bushrod Johnson, Absalom Baird, John Sappington Marmaduke, and others. All feature links to further information. Link -via Metafilter
Stanford University has an ongoing study of how children learn language. Part of that study is how they learn color names. They found it to be difficult for a lot of children -in fact, their parents worried that they might be colorblind!
As it happens, English color words may be especially difficult to learn, because in English we throw in a curve ball: we like to use color words “prenominally,” meaning before nouns. So, we’ll often say things like “the red balloon,” instead of using the postnominal construction, “the balloon is red.”
Why does this matter? It has to do with how attention works. In conversation, people have to track what’s being talked about, and they often do this visually. This is particularly so if they’re trying to make sense of whatever it is someone is going on about. Indeed, should I start blathering about “the old mumpsimus in the corner” you’re apt to begin discretely looking around for the mystery person or object.
Kids do the exact same thing, only more avidly, because they have much, much more to learn about. That means that when you stick the noun before the color word, you can successfully narrow their focus to whatever it is you’re talking about before you hit them with the color. Say “the balloon is red,” for example, and you will have helped to narrow “red-ness” to being an attribute of the balloon, and not some general property of the world at large. This helps kids discern what about the balloon makes it red.
When the researchers switched the color and noun, they found a significant improvement in performance over the children’s baseline performances, compared to the children who received prenominal training. Link -via TYWKIWBI
(Image credit: Flickr user wine me up)
The recent internet rediscovery of Marijuana Pepsi Sawyer reminds us of a few other poor souls whose parents were at a loss when filling in the birth certificate. Flavorwire tracked Sawyer and a few others down and tells their stories.
Apparently, she was named after two of her hippie parents’ favorite refreshments, and according to Sawyer, her mom’s logic went something like this: “She said that she knew when I was born that you could take this name and go around the world with it. At the time as a child, I’m thinking yeah, right. You named my older sister Kimberly. You named my younger sister Robin.” Although she struggled early on in school and endured a difficult family life, Sawyer left home at 15, became a serious student, and has now succeeded despite her name.
Also read about ESPN Montana, Ikea, Vista Avalon, and Wrigley Alexander Fields. Link
Abram Sauer of Esquire talked to Sarah Palin the other day. No, not that Sarah Palin – the other one. Does sharing a name with the inimitable former Governor of Alaska and presumably US presidential hopeful in 2012 bring a certain amount of pain? You betcha!
The name is not a common one, but there are a handful of Sarah Palins in the United States. About 12 are Facebook members. The database on Classmates.com lists 30 — including the one who graduated Wasilla’s Burchell High School in 1982. But per capita, the coincidence appears far more common in England, where a handful of the dozens of Sarah Palins I contacted were also far more willing to talk about it.
"If I had a pound for every time I have heard someone crack a joke about my name, I would be the proud owner of a Bugatti Veyron," says one Palin from Brighton. "My name is actually not the same as hers either — I am a Sara, not a Sarah."
Other Palins recounted, perhaps thanks to the former Alaska governor’s own predilection for Facebook, receiving friend requests from Mama Grizzly groupies, including positive messages of thanks for inspiring them to beat cancer. But of course there is hate mail: "you should never have been born," "you bitch," and "you’ve insulted every single black American," for starters.
"In everyday life in England it’s fine, the odd comment — everyone thinks they’re the first," says a Sarah Palin from outside of Manchester. "But on Facebook it’s just a right pain in the rear end."
“First used in a Greek translation of 5th century BC Carthaginian explorer Hanno’s account of a voyage to West Africa. He reported encountering a tribe of wild hairy people, whose females were, according to a local interpreter, called gorillas. In 1847 the American missionary and scientist Thomas Savage adopted the word as the species name of the great ape and by the 1850s it had passed into general use.” (From Dictionary of Word Origins, by John Ayto)
(Image credit: Flickr user Stacy Lynn Baum)
“Ferret comes from the Latin furritus, for ‘little thief,’ which probably alludes to the fact that ferrets, which are related to pole cats, like to steal hens’ eggs. Its name also developed into a verb, to ferret out, meaning ‘to dig out or bring something to light.’” (From Cool Cats, Top Dogs, and Other Beastly Expressions, by Christine Ammer)
“Because the little striped animal could squirt his foul yellow spray up to 12 feet, American Indians called him segankw, or segonku, the Algonquin dialect word meaning simply ‘he who squirts’. Early pioneers corrupted the hard-to-pronounce Algonquin word to skunk, and that way it has remained ever since.” (From Animal Crackers, by Robert Hendrickson)
“Before the Norman conquest of England, French hunters bred a keen-nosed dog that they called the St. Hubert. One of their rulers, William, took a pack to England and hunted deer-following the dogs on foot. Saxons had never before seen a dog fierce enough to seize its prey, so they named William’s animals hunts, meaning ‘seizure’. Altered over time to hound, it was long applied to all hunting dogs. Then the meaning narrowed to stand for breeds that follow their quarry by scent.” (From Why You Say It, by Webb Garrison)
(Image source: The Medieval Bestiary)
“It was once wrongly believed that the leopard was a cross between a ‘leo’ (a lion) and a ‘pard’ (a white panther)-hence the name ‘leopard.’” (From Why Do We Say It?, by Nigel Rees)
“According to Greek legend, the god Apollo’s earliest adventure was the single-handed slaying of Python, a flame-breathing dragon who blocked his way to Pytho (now Delphi), the site he had chosen for an oracle. From the name of this monster derives the name of the large snake of Asia, Africa, and Australia, the python.” (From Thou Improper, Thou Uncommon Noun, by Willard R. Espy)
“One would think that such an attractive creature would have given its name to many things, but in fact it is the other way around. The bird’s name comes from the red-robed official of the Roman Catholic Church, who in turn was named for being so important-that is, from the adjective cardinal, from the Latin cardo, meaning ‘hinge’ or ‘pivot’. Anything cardinal was so important that events depended (hinged or pivoted) on it.” (From It’s Raining Cats and Dogs, by Christine Ammer)
“Captain John Smith, one of the original leaders at Jamestown, wrote accounts of the colony and life in Virginia, in which he defined the creatures as Moos, a beast bigger than a stagge. Moos was from Natick (Indian) dialect and probably derived from moosu, ‘he trims, he shaves,’ a reference to the way the animal rips the bark and lower branches from trees while feeding.” (From The Chronology of Words and Phrases, by Linda and Roger Flavell)
(Image credit: Flickr user Luis Argerich )
“This long-legged pink wading bird is named for the people of Flanders, the Flemings, as they were called. Flemings were widely known for their lively personalities, their flushed complexions, and their love of bright clothing. Spaniard explorers in the New World thought it was a great joke naming the bird flamingo, which means ‘a Fleming’ in Spanish.” (From Facts on File Encyclopedia of Words and Phrase Origins, by Robert Hendrickson)
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The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Unstoppable Bathroom Reader.
Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.
If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!
1. Naaktgeboren
When Napoleon seized the Netherlands in 1810, he demanded that all Dutchmen take last names, just as the French had done decades prior. Problem was, the Dutch had lived full and happy lives with single names, so they took absurd surnames in a show of spirited defiance. These included Naaktgeboren (born naked), Spring int Veld (jump in the field), and Piest (pisses). Sadly for their descendants, Napoleon’s last-name trend stuck, and all of these remain perfectly normal Dutch names today.
2. Batman
Venezuelans are among the world’s most creative namers, In fact, according to their own government, they’re too creative. In September 2007, after hearing about babies named Superman or Batman, state authorities urged parents to pick their names from an approved list of 100 common Spanish monikers. Those conventional names (such as Juanita and Miguel) quickly acquired a patrician ring, ironically giving rise to more novel names, like Hochiminh (after the Vietnamese guerilla) ad Eisenhower (after the president). There are also at least 60 Venezuelans with the first name Hitler.
3. Eclipse Glasses
(Image source: Eclipsers)
In June 2001, a total solar eclipse was about to cross southern Africa. To prepare, the Zimbabwean and Zambian media began a massive astronomy education campaign focused on warning people not to stare at the Sun. Apparently, the campaign worked. The locals took a real liking to the vocabulary, and today, the birth registries are filled with names like Eclipse Glasses Banda, Totality Zhou, and Annular Mchombo.
4. Vladimir Ashkenazy
The people of Iceland take their names very seriously. The country permit no one-not even immigrants-to take or keep foreign surnames. So what happened when esteemed Russian maestro Vladimir Ashkenazy asked to become an Icelandic citizen? Well, the government finally decided to make an exception. Vladimir Ashkenazy is now on the short list of approved Icelandic names.
5. Yazid
Imam Husayn ibn Ali is one of the holiest figure of the Shi’ite Muslim faith. In the 7th century CE, he lost his head on the order of the Sunni caliph, Yazid, and the decapitation initiated the biggest schism in Islamic history. While the name Yazid remains common among Sunnis, it is disdained throughout the Shi’ite world. The stigmas attached to it is equivalent to naming one’s son Stalin or Hitler. Speaking of which…
6. Adolf
Memories of death camps and fascism have kept parents from christening their kids Adolf for quite some time. But one unlucky youngster acquired the name in 1949. He was the son of William Patrick Hitler-the dictator’s nephew, who moved to America in the 1930s to fight against his uncle. It isn’t clear why William preserved the name, but his four sons (including Alexander Adolf Hitler, now 57) made a pact to never have children in an effort to stunt der Fuehrer’s family tree at its branches.
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The article above, written by Graeme Wood, appeared in Scatterbrained section of the Mar – Apr 2008 issue of mental_floss magazine (the excellent “The Future of Sex” issue!). It is reprinted here with permission.
Don’t forget to feed your brain by subscribing to the magazine and visiting mental_floss‘ extremely entertaining website and blog today!
Something tells me that these guys aren’t at all gloomy! This is one of ten creatively-named night spots in Namibia listed at Buzzfeed. Did I say “creatively-named”? It’s possible these bar names were pulled out of a hat! Link
You know them, you love them (at least some of them), but you might not know that Captain Crunch, The Comic Book Guy, Mr. Clean, the Michelin Man, and the patient in the game Operation all have given names. It’s true! Mental_floss dug them up, along with lots of other fictional characters with full names, just so you’ll know. Link
In many TV shows, you know someone by their nickname, and you only know their given name if you pay close attention. In this Lunchtime Quiz from mental_floss, you’ll have to match up characters’ nicknames with the character’s real name on the show. I scored 60%, which means I missed every one that I took a guess on. Link
It’s easy to see how some nicknames came to be. "Alex" for instance is often shortened to "Al." But do you ever wonder how "Richard" becomes "Dick," William becomes "Bill" and Henry becomes "Hank"?
In this mental_floss article, Neatorama’s very own David Israel tells us the origin of some of the most common nicknames in the West:
The name Henry dates back to medieval England. (Curiously, at that time, Hank was a diminutive for John.) So how do we get Hank from Henry? Well, one theory says that Hendrick is the Dutch form of the English name Henry. Henk is the diminutive form of Hendrick, ergo, Hank from Henk. Hanks were hugely popular here in the States for many decades, though by the early 90s it no longer appeared in the top 1,000 names for baby boys.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by nmiller.
I’ve always thought that P.F.Chang would turn out to be something ridiculous like Pinkus Finkelstein Chang, or that DHL stood for Dag Hammarskjold Library (in the UN).
Apparently, neither of these are true. These, along with fourteen other abbreviated company names, have interesting origins.
AT&T and 3M are pretty well known, but do you know what IKEA, JBL, and CVS stand for?
Brothers Henry and Richard Bloch founding the tax preparation firm in Kansas City in 1955. Their only problem was their last name. The brothers worried that people would mispronounce their surname as “blotch,” hardly a term you want associated with your tax return. They decided to sidestep this problem by spelling the company’s name “Block” instead, so that nobody would miss the solid hard “k” sound.
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by nmiller.
Randall Munroe of xkcd conducted an online color survey, the results from 222,500 user sessions are ready. The aim of the survey was to find what names people associate with colors. As you can see, no one knows how to spell fuchsia. I had to stop and roll in the floor at the “disproportionally popular” color names by gender section. Link -via reddit
How well do you know your world leaders, or NFL placekickers? You’d think this Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss would be easy, but you may need some real luck to identify these twelve names. I didn’t know any of them! So I scored 50%, just like the odds said I would. Link
Well, you may have heard of at least some of these, but you can expand your color vocabulary. Now you’ll be able to say “malachite” instead of “kind of a dusky teal green” or “sort of like that Ford van color but a tiny bit bluer.” The car shown is the color known as malachite.
This color is also known as basic green 4 and is often used when creating a green dye. This vibrant green comes from the carbonate mineral known as Malachite, or copper carbonate. In the 1800, the mineral was widely used for green paints because it was lightfast and often varied in color. The color is one that is seen rampant in history. For instance, there is the Malachite Room in Hermitage, and it is also said that Demeter’s throne was made of this color as well.
Link -via Interesting Pile
Diseases and conditions are often named after the doctor who first described or treated it. Years after the doctor is gone, people associate the name with the condition, such as Tourette’s Syndrome.
Credit George Gilles de la Tourette for his modesty. When the French neurologist first described the illness that now bears his name in 1884, he didn’t name it after himself. Instead, he referred to the condition as “maladie des tics.” Tourette’s mentor and contemporary Jean-Martin Charcot renamed the illness after Tourette.
Tourette didn’t have such great luck with patients, though. In 1893, a deluded former patient shot the doctor in the head. The woman claimed that she lost her sanity after Tourette hypnotized her. Tourette survived the attack.
Mental_floss takes a look at 13 of those people and the ailments that made them a household name. Link
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39-year-old Sara Foss of Derby, England is already the mother of 13 children and is expecting her 14th. She says as soon as the new baby is born in April, she’ll try to get pregnant again. Foss vows to keep on having babies until she has twins or triplets!
Her mammoth brood now comprises Patrick, 23, Stephen, 13, Malachai, 12, Peppermint, 11, Echo, 10, Eli, nine, Rogue, eight, Frodo, seven, Morpheus, five, Artemis, four, Blackbird, three, Baudelaire, two, and nine-month-old Voorhees.
No word yet on what number 14 will be named. Link -via I Am Bored
(image credit: Flickr user Mick 0)
Children are rarely familiar with the names the LEGO company gives its various bricks and accessories. Giles Turnbull was delighted to find his son had his own terms for each piece. So he gathered more children, four in all, to find out what names they used, and assembled those names in a handy chart. Link -via Buzzfeeed
These are the kinds of wine that people buy just for the name. Are they good? Who knows? No one wants to open a bottle, they just want everyone to see the name on their wine shelf! The wine pictured was named (Oops) because it was made from grapes that had been mislabeled for years. Link -via Blame It On The Voices
This small town got its name from an incident in which a store owner cheated a postal worker by charging him an extra fifty cents for a better watermelon. Certainly they are much more hospitable these days, though it appears they all are still pretty tight with their money: none of the families counted in the 2006 census were living below the poverty line. And most of them keep their money in the Tightwad Bank.
Read about twenty other strangely-named places and the stories behind them. Link -via J-Walk Blog
One of the charms of Britain is the array of friendly, locally owned neighborhood pubs and their interesting historic names.
Britain’s colourful pub signs speak volumes about the country’s equally colourful history, as well as depicting folklore, heraldry and social customs. Pubs were never named by accident and each sign invariably has a story behind it. The artwork on Britain’s pub signs is inspired by royalty and nobility, religion and the church, military heroes and battles, occupations and trades, myths and legends, sporting activities and pastimes, along with numerous other sources.
Read some of those stories at Dark Roasted Blend. Link
You are cordially invited to the wedding of Kelly Hildebrandt and Kelly Hildebrandt? You may not be personally invited, but it’s true that the two Kelly Hildebrandts are getting married. The female Hildebrandt is from Florida, and she fell in love with a guy in Texas with the same name!
“I was like, ‘I wonder if there’s any other Kelly Hildebrandts on Facebook’,” she explained. “So, I searched my own name and he’s the only one that came up. And actually, in the picture, he didn’t have his shirt on, and I’m like, ‘oh, he’s cute!’”
And the Kelly in Texas was also intrigued.
“She started off, ‘hey, I see we have the same name, and I thought it was kinda cool, so I wanted to say hi, I guess’. Lots of laughs,” he said.
Three weeks after their first online encounter, Kelly, the boy from Texas, decided to fly to south Florida, and see Kelly, the girl, in person.
The two will be wed in October. Link -via YesButNoButYes
