What's In A Name? Plenty, If This Is Anything To Go By

You wouldn't want to live in Nasty, nor I guess would you be happy saying you're an 'Ugley' person. Turns out names can give us a remarkably accurate insight into the character of a person, if not a town.

Despite the name, Nasty is a beautiful place.

Likewise, Ugley, is a comely village set the English county of Essex.

The French may have to think things through again though, for in the photo research for this, I found a French village called 'Les Arses'.

These village names from the UK and France are generally the opposite of the place.

However, when it comes to people character clues can be found in the name.

Recently I was doing a story on the coal fire at Morwell in Victoria, Australia and was assisted by a friendly and knowledgeable mines expert, David Cliff, and I thought, “How great is that? A mines expert called Cliff.”

Then I moved in to a story about the dumping of dredge spoil on the Great Barrier Reef, and discovered the woman leading the fight to keep the waters of the Great Barrier reef pristine is Greens' Senator, Larissa Waters.

Likewise doesn’t get better than that, a woman named Waters fighting to save the water.

I might add, the person she is fighting is the Federal Environment Minister, Greg Hunt, and his surname is oh-so-appropriate when considered in rhyming slang.

That also twigged for me hearing an interview with an excessively brainy fellow from the Uni of South Australia.

His name was Richard Head.

Passing lightly over the unfortunate first/surname combination, we see a man who makes his living with his head, called Head.

Then, and admittedly moving away from the severely functional, while watching Black Books on the ABC, I noted that the subtitles were done by someone called Anil Mistry.

I tip toe carefully around the defamation laws, and simply say, the name jumped out at me.

Maybe that says more about my adolescent sense of humour than anything else.

Then we come to the Australian Federal Government, headed by an Abbott, and containing a Bishop.

This is oh-so-appropriate as they are a government who don’t have a lot of brains, and act as they are living in the thirteenth century, when religion ruled the Earth.

On the topic, previous to this incarnation of government we had the Howard government in power.

Howard’s second and third in command were Peter Costello and the then rising minister, Tony Abbott.

There was talk at the time of Howard resigning, and handing over to his deputy, Costello.

This was truly the only time in my life that for a millisecond I thought of voting for the Liberal Party, as I was desperate for Australia to be run by Abbott and Costello.

And considering the antics of our current Prime Minister, it would almost certainly have been an accurate description.

Elsewhere in the government there is Assistant Health Minister Fiona Nash.

Why is she mentioned here?

Because we all loathe and detest this corrupt cow to the point where we gnash our teeth to the point of bits of enamel coming off.

The Minister for Trade and investment is named Robb, which he does with great alacrity, and would no doubt work well with the Assistant Immigration Minister, Michaelia Cash.

Andrew Robs you, to give the government lots of Cash.

The Minister for Human Services is named Payne, and that’s what she dispenses to the field of human services, Pain.

And finally there is the treasurer, Joe Hockey.

A bit esoteric, but I include him because the budget he has just handed down will destroy so many lives of Australia’s poor, but it’s all just a game to him.

I did check out the Labor opposition members of Parliament, but they are remarkably free of name-job ironic nomenclature.

The best they had was Tim Watts, whom I was hoping would be the Shadow Minister of Electricity and Power, but he’s not so far.

Let’s look to the future there.

Then there’s the former Greens leader, the much, and justifiably venerated, Bob Brown.

I just thought it was funny that a party called Green, was headed by a man named Brown.

But then we move to the world of names that have to cross the language divide.

Probably best exemplified by the General Motors car the Chevy Nova.

This name is fine in English, but whence it goes over to Spanish, problems arise.

For in Spanish, ‘Nova’ means, stationary, or doesn’t go, neither a useful appellate for a car.

And likewise the most famous bad name into Spanish is the Pajero, which means 'wanker' in Spanish.

In French we have a problem with the Triumph MR2.

When pronounced in French, this is ‘emm-err-der’, which when said at normal speaking pace is ‘me-err-de’, or the French word for shit.

In most of the Spanish speaking world ‘bichos’ means animals, but there are a myriad of meaning variants here, and in many countries ‘bichos’ does not mean all animals, but refers only to insects.

So a major chemical company released a new pesticide which had the slogan ‘will remove all the bichos in the land’.

That was fine, but in Puerto Rico, 'bichos' had been abstracted one more layer to signify ‘testicles’, and thus there was no doubt much alarm in this central American country when they saw this slogan.

I might add this was one of the most successful ever environmental campaigns ever, with the company told in no uncertain words to either, not release the pesticide or change the slogan.

But the best of all was the slogan for former American football player, Frank Perdue.

Upon retirement he opened a chain of chicken restaurants which had the slogan ‘it takes a tough man to make a tender chicken’.

Great marketing until he opened in the Spanish speaking states, New Mexico, Texas and California.

Here the translated slogan came out in Spanish as, ‘it takes a sexually stimulated man to make a chicken affectionate’.

No doubt true, but you don’t want a man like that anywhere near a chicken you are about to eat.

More ranting in my blog: http://cyclonecharlie88.blogspot.com.au/