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Sunday, April 13, 2008

Best Names

Of all the names that I have heard these are the ones that stand out to me. In retrospect I find the criteria is:
roll off my tongue + obscurity (+ conversation piece)
Most of them are from the world of professional sports -I realize I know the names of more sports players than people in my life.

Taurian Fontenette (AKA Mr. 720. AKA The Air up there)
Plays for And1. He's famous for performing a 720 dunk during a game. The video of it is excellent. My favourite part is that soon after he dunks a kid does an intense re-enactment on the ground. I find the names emerging from the black community in the USA to be the most creative. They make new names or change traditional spelling, e.g: Vonnessa. Perhaps because I'm used to classic white-Christian names (Michael, Matthew, John, etc). I remember the two main characters in the book There Are No Children Here. It was about Lafayette and Pharoah Rivers growing up in Chicago.

Saku Koivu
Finnish Hockey player for the Montreal Canadians. I could say this name all day long. The Finns do names right
(Teemu Selanne, Teppo Numinen).

God Shammgod
I remember seeing him play college basketball. He was drafted by Washington but didn't make the regular rotation.


Ted Starr

The name of a student I taught a couple of years ago. He was a rock star/hockey captain/all-around nice guy with a Team Canada temper during sports. He also had good sense of humour. The name was a perfect fit.


Other:
Chauncey Billups
My friend declared this the greatest name in sports history. The Toronto Raptors used to have him but they traded him to Detroit and watched him win a championship.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I would have to agree with Simon - Chauncey Billups would have to be my number 1. How strange is it that we chose that name as our all-purpose insult name while he was still an unknown and now he is a star? I must admit, the name lost a bit of its charm when Billups got popular.

At work, I deal with an IT expert in Indianapolis whose name is David Mehornay. For the longest time I thought it was a prank.