March Madness has begun, but I'm not talking about college basketball. No, it's the annual insanity that is Name of the Year that has me studying brackets and placing side bets. Go here to read about the tournament and here to see the ballot.
As in the past, there will undoubtedly be some white-knuckle moments. I predict a sudden-death match between Chastity Clapp and Crystal Metheny in the Bulltron Regional, and a very close race between Moonlit Wang and Brooklyn Pope in the Chrotchtangle [sic] Regional. But I'm sure Uranus Golden, Nutritious Love, and Telephone Mtoko have their devoted fans as well.
The ballot went up at 12:01 a.m. (EDT) today, and already Nancy's Baby Names has picked a final four. How about you?
About NOTY:
Name of the Year was founded in 1983 on an Ivy League campus. Its mission has remained unchanged: to discover, verify, nominate, elect and disseminate great names. All names included here are, to the best of our knowledge, real. No malice is intended.
Okay, I'll play. Bulltron - Chastity Clapp, for the breathtaking ignorance needed to put these names together; Sithole - Richard Titball, of course; Dragonwagon - Velvet Milkman because it makes me crack up; and Chrotchtangle - I cannot resist Moonlit Wang.
I can't predict a winner yet though.
And P.S., Nancy, check out the 2004 winner on the NOTY site - the late father of an old Hebrew school pal. I have those boxes in my basement!
Posted by: Jessica | March 18, 2009 at 07:58 AM
@Jessica: Mr. Fruithandler's name reminds me of Indian occupational surnames. Merchant comes to mind. And there's a prominent executive at ad agency Publicis named Rashid Tobaccowala ("wala"= vendor).
Posted by: Nancy Friedman | March 18, 2009 at 08:04 AM
@Fritinancy - In addition to Indian occupational surnames, there are lots of common occupational surnames in English. I continue to be amused that my great-grandfather Cutler came from Sheffield, England (home of cutlery). There are also lots of Bakers, Cooks, Coopers (barrel-makers), Fletchers (arrow-makers), and all of those Smiths....
Posted by: NextMoon | March 18, 2009 at 10:07 AM
@NextMoon: Of course. And also Schneider (tailor), Schuster (shoemaker), Kellner (waiter), etc. The Indian surnames are especially interesting because they're bilingual or English in a non-native-English-speaking context.
Posted by: Nancy Friedman | March 18, 2009 at 10:12 AM
A) Who is responsible for the seeding? Did they use a random number table or some computer-generated pseudo-random algorithm?
and
2) Who is responsible for choosing JPEG for the formatting of the picture?
Posted by: Faldone | March 19, 2009 at 03:55 AM
@Faldone:
A) I don't know.
B) I don't know.
I suggest you visit NOTY and leave questions there.
Posted by: Nancy Friedman | March 19, 2009 at 09:39 AM