Names; A Collector's Compendium of Rare and Unusual, Bold and Beautiful, Odd and Whimsical

New York, N.Y.: Delacorte Press, 1986. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. xviii, [2], 282, [2] pages. Introduction followed by 33 chapters. Illustrations. Bibliography. Biography. Signed by the author on the half-title page. Paul Dickson (born 1939 in Yonkers, New York) is a freelance writer of more than 65 non-fiction books, mostly on American English language and popular culture. He has written many articles on a wide variety of subjects, including baseball and the military. He is a founding member and former president of Washington Independent Writers and a member of the National Press Club. Dickson coined the term "word word". For his published work on baseball, The Washington Post has described Dickson as "baseball's answer to Noah Webster or, at the very least, William Safire." In May 1979, he appeared on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson to promote his book The Official Rules, which detailed the history of Murphy's Law and similar aphorisms. Carson and Dickson spent time sharing similar sayings that they enjoyed. Names includes lists of unusual names of animals, apples, politicians, baseball players, cars, businesses, robots, actors, products, writers, and teams, and shares unusual facts about names and nicknames. The author admits to a compulsive fascination with the vast wealth of names in English. In the course of his exhaustive research for this book, he collected tens of thousands of names, then for the delight and delectation of word and name lovers everywhere, he selected the oddest, most interesting and captivating names, dividing them into thirty-three categories from cars to trade names to apples. This big, rich book contains, in addition to assorted anagrams, palindromes, and aptronyms, the names and nicknames of such people, places, and things as trains, apes, boats, houses, extraterrestrials, actors, teams, games, food, towns, pool hustlers, gangsters, baseball players, nuclear power plants, hurricanes, and streets. Names often have curious stories connected to them or need brief explanations, and Paul Dickson has provided hundreds of explanations and stories that significantly enhance and enliven the book.