As you might know, I have a thing about names. Specifically, how it is that some people’s surnames correspond so well with their occupations or situations. Now, some people change their names on purpose to match their jobs: Strippers and radio announcers are bad for this – Tommy Tunes, C.D. Spinner, Jackie Mike (I made those up). So, these don’t count.
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No, it’s the real deals that interest me and make me wonder whether there is a link between a person’s name and his or her career prospects. If I can prove a connection in an upcoming paper I hope to develop on this, the benefits for humanity would be incalculable.
Take Ginger Vaughan, for example. Are you surprised she’s the contact The Old Farmers Almanac lists regarding homemade health remedies? And the Hays family, I believe, were led by some force beyond their control to sponsor a competition for farmers at the Royal Winter Fair. If Jim Riehl from the London Sports Fishery could find a guy named Rod to work with, my theory would be sealed.
Military people, it seems, often have names that correspond with what they do. Maj.-Gen. Gary Speer is the deputy commanding general of U.S. forces in Kuwait, where the fighting in the Gulf War was often primitive. Rollo Mainguy, a captain in the Second World War, was considered one of Canada’s finest officers and eventually was promoted to naval Chief of Staff.
Pat VanSickle, of the Integrated Grain Processors Co-operative, out of Brantford, cuts a wide swath in his field, apparently. And Nelson Wiseman, professor of political science, really knows his stuff. Hank Goody, Crown attorney in Toronto, is all for law and order while Kate Burnett chose well when she got a job working in public relations for a company promoting smoke alarms.
Religion, too, attracts those with inspired names. Clint Chapple, a biochemist at Purdue University, has spent time analyzing a theory about the Shroud of Turin that some people believe was the burial cloth of Jesus. Jerry Meek is chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party which opposes a pastor who gave the boot to any followers who didn’t support George Bush in last fall’s U.S. election.
And speaking of Bush, Douglas Wead, one of his former friends, openly discussed the president’s former use of marijuana (explaining his former friend status).
Writer Stacy A. Teicher had an article in a recent Christian Science Monitor about kids who skip class. I don’t know if the story will be picked up by Carolyn Press of the Ontario Community Newspapers’ Association. Both women are a lot luckier than Ms. Coke who was pulled over by police in the U.S. with 30 pounds of cocaine in her trunk.
Winged creatures, for some reason, attract the correctly named. David Bird, for example, is McGill University’s director of avian science, so you can’t get much clearer than that. And father and son team George and Mark Peck are bird experts at the Royal Ontario Museum. The right (or wrong, depending on viewpoint) kind of bird might end up in a recipe contained in the book The Cookbook Store, owned by Alison Frier.
Here’s a quick list: Chris Winter, weather expert, talking on CBC TV about the recent heat wave; Alison Spring, correspondent, on CBC TV reporting on the flooding out west; Cpl. Tim Shields is part of the Integrated Municipal Provincial Auto Crime Team.
One child is a blessing but four must be overwhelming as Shelley Breedlove of Houston no doubt found out when she gave birth to identical quads Adelle, Bonnie, Chloe and Daphne. And it seems the process by which she arrived in that situation is being practised in Canada by progressively younger teens every year – as young as 14 years of age, in fact. So reports Jane Wilde, nurse, educator and clinic supervisor at Options for Sexual Health in Prince Rupert, B.C. discussing teenage sex getting younger.
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“What I see is the connection between alcohol and sexual behaviour is really high,” Prince Rupert’s Wilde said. “The whole drinking culture has loosened things up for the kids.”
And adding to increasing activity, perhaps in a somewhat older group, is the important work being done on phalloplasty (penis enlargement and/or lengthening) in Toronto by Dr. Robert H. Stubbs. Dr. Stubbs was the first certified plastic surgeon to return to America from China where he observed the penis-lengthening technique of Dr. Long.
This is all too much for me, of course. I think I’ll go and talk to Stan Orchard, an expert on bullfrogs eating everything in sight.
I need an expert on bull anything to complete the doctorate I will be publishing soon, a thesis I promise will set us all free.
©2005 Jim Hagarty
