I’m fascinated by personal names that, out of context, don’t appear to be names at all. Especially when said names are created from everyday nouns and proper nouns — places, foods, animals, objects, brands, ideas, events, institutions, organizations, qualities, phenomena, and so forth.
My fascination kicked into high gear after I wrote about noun-names earlier this year. Ever since, I’ve kept my eyes peeled for noun-names.
So far, I’ve collected hundreds. But it’s going to take me a while to blog about all of them. In the meanwhile, I thought I’d list some of the strangest ones I’ve already talked about:
- Bandit
- Cape Cod
- Captivity
- Celerie (celery)
- Danger
- Eclipse
- Emancipation Proclamation
- Emirates
- Eiffel Tower
- Fourth
- Freeway
- Funeral
- Golden Palace
- Halloween
- Helsinki
- Jeep
- Joker
- Key West
- Knuckles
- Legal Tender
- Metallica
- Oleomargarine
- Opera House
- Orbit
- Peaches
- Pebbles
- Peppermint
- Prohibition
- Rainbow
- Shotgun
- Skylab
- Soccer City
- Sou’Wester
- Strawberry
- Suffrage
- Tahiti
- Trooper
- Tsunami
- Union Jack
- Vick Vaporup (Vicks VapoRub)
- Wilmot Proviso
- Zeppelin
Did I skip any good ones? Let me know in the comments!
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Later additions…
- Sputnik, 10/4
- Nintendo, 10/22
- Annexation, 10/25
- Windchime, 11/9
- Oregon Territory, 11/22
- Gold Dust, 11/29