What’s In a Name?

Who
makes these names up? We are convinced there is a windowless office somewhere,
in Heaven or Hell if not on this Earth, where
a squad of poor bastards is charged with making up all the names we read
in the newspaper or hear on television.  Mostly, the names are pretty
good, and we hardly notice their subtle subconscious messages or artificiality,
but sometimes, we know not why, the made-up names in the news stand out
starkly either for their theatrical appropriateness or for plain bad
taste. Perhaps every once in a while the good shit makes it into the
windowless room.

For example, who keeps coming up with names like Joey Buttafuco and
Condoleeza Rice. These are obviously fake names. Another example is the
ridiculous insistence that the titular head of the World
Bank
be
a member
of the rapaciousWolf
Pack – James Wolfensohn and Paul Wolfowitz being
the latest examples. Isn’t that kind of rubbing our faces in it?

Other cases abound, like Haitian Prime
Minister Gerard
Latortue. Or, whoever got the idea of naming the capital of the
free Republic of Albania
Tirana? Then there are the sorry surnames
of the Russian doubles team of the Elenas: Dementieva and Bovina,
or the equally unfortunately named Russian skater Irina
Slutskaya.

But the naming nerds outdid themselves when they assembled the current
College of Cardinals to "elect"
the next Pope.  Do they
expect us to believe that the two top candidates are really named Ratzinger
and Lustiger?
Pynchon couldn’t have come up with more sinister names in his prime! Maybe our
friend Harold the Chips Tycoon is right, and the Pope is indeed the Anti-Christ.

Papal article from the Boston Globe