Category:
Odd Names

Miss Grey Cup

Read about this beauty queen title here, with lots more pictures.

What's great though is the local titles of the individual beauty queens competing for the overall title. Nothing evokes femininity like "Winnipeg Blue Bomber" or "Calgary Stampeder."

CANADA - NOVEMBER 25: In training: Entrants in the Miss Grey Cup contest worked out at the Toronto Women's Club yesterday. Left to right are Miss B.C. Lion Debbie Kushner; Miss Calgary Stampeder Sherri Brooks; Miss Hamilton Tiger Cat Angie Balogh; Miss Montreal Concorde Lynda Mercier; Miss Winnipeg Blue Bomber Kim Walls; Miss Saskatchewan Roughrider Leslie McNaughton; Miss Toronto Argonaut Suzanne Housego and Miss Edmonton Eskimo Betty Jandewerth.





Posted By: Paul - Sun Feb 18, 2024 - Comments (1)
Category: Awards, Prizes, Competitions and Contests, Beauty, Ugliness and Other Aesthetic Issues, Odd Names, North America, Twentieth Century

Kilty as charged

A case of being guilty of being Kilty.

When the magistrates' clerk asked: "Are you guilty?" he thought he had been asked, "Are you Kilty?" He replied "Yes" and was duly convicted

The Guardian - Feb 25, 1969

Posted By: Alex - Sat Feb 10, 2024 - Comments (0)
Category: Law, Judges, Odd Names, 1960s

Women for Women International’s International Board Member

The title of this woman's position went a bit off the rail's rails.

Her husband is a big political muckety-muck.

Posted By: Alex - Wed Jan 10, 2024 - Comments (0)
Category: Jobs and Occupations, Odd Names

The Unhappy Mr. Happy Newyear

Happy Newyear was a carpenter who lived in Sleepy Eye, Minnesota. Technically his first name was 'Emil', but everyone, including his parents, had been calling him Happy since he was a child .

The media found out about his unusual name sometime in the early 1940s, and from that point on Newyear would be hounded by reporters every New Year.

Minneapolis Star - Dec 31, 1943



Brantford Expositor - Jan 4, 1947



At first he reluctantly played along with it all. In 1947, he and his wife even participated in a New Year's show in Toronto. But as the years went by, it's evident he had had enough. By the 1960s, when reporters were still seeking him out each year, he would simply close the door in their face.





Sioux City Journal - Jan 2, 1960



I think 'Happy' or 'Hap' must be a fairly common nickname among people whose last name is Newyear. A quick search of cemetery records found two Newyears with the nickname 'Hap': Francis "Hap" Newyear and Harold "Hap" Newyear.

Posted By: Alex - Sun Dec 31, 2023 - Comments (0)
Category: Odd Names, New Year

Miss Heating Comfort and the Whale Oil Company

The Whale Oil Company, which sponsored the Miss Heating Comfort contest, said it was looking to award the title to the girl "who makes temperatures rise when she enters a room."

Brooklyn Daily - Feb 10, 1961



Newsday - Oct 22, 1960



So did the Whale Oil Company actually sell whale oil? No, but apparently the name led a lot of people to assume that it did. I haven't been able to find out what became of the company, but I'm guessing that the name must have become an increasing liability with the rise of the "Save the Whales" movement in the late 1960s.

Brooklyn Daily Eagle - Nov 3, 1950

Posted By: Alex - Sun Nov 19, 2023 - Comments (1)
Category: Awards, Prizes, Competitions and Contests, Odd Names, Fossil Fuels, Carbon Footprint, and Climate Change, 1960s

The Vibrators

A Pittsburgh pop-rock group from the 1970s. Not to be confused with the British punk rock band also known as The Vibrators.



Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - Jan 21, 1976



Posted By: Alex - Fri Oct 27, 2023 - Comments (0)
Category: Music, Odd Names, 1970s

Speed-O-Sex

Chick sexing is the profession of separating newly hatched female from male chicks. Hatcheries employ chick sexors so that they don't waste money feeding the male chicks that aren't going to grow up to lay eggs.

Differentiating a male from a female chick is quite challenging, especially doing this quickly. The techniques for doing so were first developed in Japan and then brought to America, where Japanese-Americans dominated the industry for most of the 20th century.

The main industry organization was the National Chick Sexing Association and School. But a smaller school, based in Atlanta Georgia in the late 1940s, called itself Speed-O-Sex.

Gotta wonder if that name ever caused confusion among local residents.

More info: DiscoverNikkei.org

Chicago Japanese-American year book, 1947

Posted By: Alex - Mon Oct 16, 2023 - Comments (1)
Category: Jobs and Occupations, Odd Names, Farming, 1940s

The Hobo Jungle Murder

You might or might not be surprised at the number of hits one gets when searching for "hobo murder." I guess that milieu was a really violent one. In any case, I highlight this instance for the great hobo names. I assume "Knubbs" meant "nubs," referring to the dead man's lack of hands.

What would your own hobo name be, by the way?



Posted By: Paul - Tue Sep 26, 2023 - Comments (0)
Category: Bums, Hobos, Tramps, Beggars, Panhandlers and Other Streetpeople, Death, Odd Names, Police and Other Law Enforcement, 1940s

Hitler Species

There are two species of insects named after Hitler. The mystery, however, might be why more creatures weren't named after Hitler by German scientists during the 1930s, as a way to curry favor with him. The answer, surprisingly, seems to be that requests were made, but Hitler would always ask for his name not to be used. (The insect researchers never asked for his permission). Text from The Art of Naming by Michael Ohl (2018 translation):

In 1933, German coleopterist and civil engineer Oscar Scheibel, residing in Ljubjana, Slovenia, then part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, purchased from a Slovenian biologist several specimens of an unknown beetle that had been found in the caves near the city of Celje. In 1937, Scheibel published in Entomologische Blätter a description of a light-brown ground beetle a mere five millimeters long under the name Anophthalmus hitleri. After the war, Scheibel is supposed to have claimed that naming the beetle in honor of Hitler had been a subversive act: after all, this was an unlovely species of brown, blind cave beetle that lived hidden from view. This defense must be squared with the original description, the final sentence of which reads, "Dedicated to Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler, as an expression of my reverence." No official response from the Reich Chancellery was documented in this case.

To date, Anophthalmus hitleri has been found in but a handful of caves in Slovenia. Particularly after the media discovered and circulated the Hitler beetle story in 2000, interest in this species has been rekindled. A well-preserved specimen of Anophthalmus hitleri can fetch upward of 2,000 euros on the collectors' market; among the bidders, certainly some wish to add the Hitler beetle to their collection of Nazi memorabilia. . .

At least one other species has been named after Adolf Hitler: the fossil Roechlingia hitleri, which belongs to the Palaeodictyoptera, a group of primitive fossil insects. Roechlingia hitleri was described in 1934 by German geologist and paleontologist Paul Guthörl. . .

Extensive research has failed to turn up any other species named in honor of Hitler. This seems surprising, as this form of salute could have proven quite expedient to aspiring German scientists from about 1933 until 1945, at the latest...

The likeliest explanation is that when Hitler patronyms were planned, approval was sought in advance from the Führer (by way of the Reich Chancellery), whether out of respect or perhaps fear of potential consequences. In 1933, for instance, a rose breeder submitted a written request to the Reich Chancellery for permission to introduce to the international market one of his best rose varieties, bearing Hitler's name. Similarly, a nursery owner from Schleswig-Holstein hoped to name a "prized strawberry variety" the "Hitler strawberry," in honor of the Reich Chancellor. They already had a "Hindenburg" strawberry variety in their catalog, he added. In reply to both cases, Hans Heinrich Lammers, Chief of the Reich Chancellery, sent almost identical letters, in which the inquiring parties were informed that, "upon careful consideration, [the reich Chancellor] requests that a name in his honor most kindly not be used." . . .

Perhaps this fundamental rejection of honorary names is the reason that so few hitleris exist.

Anophthalmus hitleri
source: Wikipedia

Posted By: Alex - Fri Sep 01, 2023 - Comments (1)
Category: Dictators, Tyrants and Other Harsh Rulers, Insects and Spiders, Odd Names, Science

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