Ask Lemmy

I knew a guy who is called Gerard Menfroy. This is pronounced exactly the same as « J’ai rarement froid » in French, which means « I rarely feel cold ». He was Heating engineer.

There's a name for that; nominative determinism

I used to work in a call center and had a notably irate customer named Mrs. Bitschy. I tried pronouncing it like "Beeshy", and she immediately snapped "It's Bitchy! Got a problem with that!?" Oof.

My husband’s vasectomy was performed by Dr. Wiener.

The pilot on my plane a few years back was named Max Power

I think he retired during Covid, but a nearby lasik clinic was run by Dr. Biglaiser. I don’t see how that could have been his real name.

This guy

There was a trial against members of the NSU, a German extremist-right terrorist organisation, a few years ago and the lawyers representing them were named Sturm (storm), Heer (army) and Stahl (steel). In combination they sound like something a Nazi came up with to make them sound powerful and strong.

I remember reading about a military guy, Staff Sergeant Max Fightmaster. I have no idea what he actually does (or did; guy's probably retired by now) but if he hasn't at least spent some time teaching martial arts he's doing it wrong.

Edit: apparently he's a computer technician and that's even better somehow.

Gay Hitler. Worst part is he was born before those were offensive names or terms but lived long enough for them to get there meaning. Wasn't even meant to have the last name Hitler, It was a misspelling of Hiddler or something like that.

11 hours in and no Usain Bolt???

This is gonna sound fake, but I knew a butcher named Butch Pig. He was Butch before he was a butcher

There was a racing driver named Scott Speed. Unfortunately he's got no speed.

I work in dairy company, once I was checking SAP for something and saw a name-surname "Olgun Erkek" (Mature Male in Turkish). We are receiving his raw milk, it is like porn name when you picture it like that.

Wolfgang Wolf was at some point manager of German club Wolfsburg!

There is a doctor near us named Dr. Owi.

Had a religious studies teach called Mrs Holyland

I had a taxi driver once who's last name was snel. Which is Dutch for fast or quick or speed.

The original head of Teslas autopilot division is named Andrej Karpathy. car-path-y

I used to work in a call center and once took a call from a guy named Jacob J. Justice. Guy should've been a Marvel superhero.

Kid at school named Miles Long.

Lots of nominative determinism in this thread.

There's the newspaper columnist with the world's record highest IQ, Marilyn vos Savant. In French, you can read her name as "your (plural) scholar/scientist." When I was a kid, I was sure that it was a pen name, but it turns out it's actually her mother's maiden name.

Dr Healey. Nice.

Not sure if this is what you were going for, but I had a high school teacher named Mr. Student.

There's an HGTV person named Page Turner.

These are called "aptroynms" and Wikipedia has a great list of them and also inaptroyms. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptronym

There are several dentists in my area that have the last name of Beaver. They’re all related and it seems like the original one felt like that was too good of an opportunity to pass up on, and subsequent generations joined the family business.

My daughter had to visit an allergist and his name was Dr. J. Doctor

In Germany there was a couple therapist named Von Hinten, which translates to From Behind as in doggy style. Last I heard she perished in the Christmas tsunami.

A dude named Sobriety Promise (both words were his first name). That guy's parents were assholes to name their kid that. Bro had to announce that his parents used to be drunk losers every time he said his name lmao. He went by his middle name and changed it as soon as he could. Poor guy. It's no wonder he became an alcoholic later 😐

There's a meme image of a screenshot of a news broadcast featuring a fireman named Les McBurney.

This sort of thing apparently happens enough that it has a name: an aptronym.

When I was a kid, my parents were thinking about building a house. The name of the contractor who was helping them was named "Kari A Hammer." I might be spelling it wrong (I was eight), but that was his actual name.

I like to think he wanted to be a tattoo artist or something and hated carpentry, but was forced into it because of his name.