How Mr Westfallen woke up as Mr Happy Spanners

[Chris]

How Mr Westfallen woke up as Mr Happy Spanners

Divorce, drunkenness and in one case the desire to be legally recognised as Mr Happy Adjustable Spanners led record numbers of Britons to change their name this year.

More than 46,000 people altered their identity by deed poll during 2008, a 15 per cent rise on the number of people who became someone else last year.

Many limited themselves to a practical change, reverting to a maiden name after a marital breakdown. For others the alteration signalled a more radical personal revolution.

In Essex there is now a man named General Ninja Ant, who believes that his name change has helped him to become more assertive after years of bullying.

In Devon a former company director who was once named Janice Glover became Saxon Knight: the change signalling her new life in retirement, and her deep sense of patriotism. “I chose Saxon because I love the UK,” Mrs Knight said. “The other option was Norman but that’s a man’s name.”


(more...)

Okay, this was kind of funny.  I laughed.

[asdf2231]

SEE!

I TOLD my wife that changing my name to Throb McSteelyshaft  would be good for my self confidence, but Nooooooo! All she could do was whine about how the adress labels on the Christmas cards would look!

[Chris]

This one is even worse...

What's in a name? 10 cases where moniker maketh man

The New Scientist gave it the name nominative determinism - the idea that there is a link between people's names and their occupation.

In their book Yes!, Goldstein, Martin and Cialdini cite the classic piece of research that supports the idea that nominative determism really exists. A study of the rolls of the American Dental Association shows that more people called Dennis become dentists than you would expect if the choice of profession were purely random.

And now we have the exquisitely named Bernard Madoff, making off with his client's cash.

Here are my top 10 examples of nominative determinism.

1. Theodore Hee. Mr T. Hee was responsible for most of the early comic storylines for Walt Disney films.

2. Cardinal Sin. The classic example, I think. Jamie Sin was an Archbishop of the Roman Catholic Church of the Philippines. Wikipedia helpfully notes: "His name should not be confused with "cardinal sin", which is synonymous for the seven deadly sins".

...

6. Governor Blagojevich. The man responsible for introducing Americans to the British slang term "blag" which as the dictionary puts it means "To rob, steal [origin unknown]

http://timesonline.typepad.com/comment/2008/12/the-new-scienti.html