Gag name
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A gag name is a false name used to elicit humor through its simultaneous resemblance to a real name on the one hand, and to a term or phrase that is funny, strange, or vulgar on the other hand. The source of the humor is the pun and double entendre; frequently, the humor arises when an unknowing victim is induced to use the name without realizing the joke. Urban legend holds that such a prank is often played on substitute teachers or others who must read a roll, for whom pranksters will switch the roll with one containing such names.
Some names that would be considered gag names have been adopted as stage names by performers, often in the adult entertainment industry as with Pat McGroin Mike Hunt, Seymore Butts, Mike Hawk, Heywood Jablome, Hugh Jass, Hugh G. Rection, Dick Hertz, Hugh Janus, Dixie Normus, Dixie Rect, Howie Feltersnatch, Jack Offalot, Patty O'Furniture, Phil Uranus and Ben Dover. Gag names can also be applied to businesses, such as Howard Stern's use of the fictitious Sofa King: in a hoax ad, the store was described as being "Sofa King great" (i.e., "so fucking great"). A January 18, 2000, FCC complaint against Muller for using the phrase was dismissed. A similar sketch was performed on Saturday Night Live in early 2007 [1], portraying Sofa King as a new store opening after the success of Mattress King.
[edit] Examples in fiction
An early example of a contrived name being put to comedic effect is the Abbott and Costello bit "Who's on First?", describing a baseball team with players such as "Who" playing first base, "What" playing second, and "I Don't Know" on third. In the routine, Abbott identifies the players, but Costello is unable to discern that he is actually being told the names.
James Bond films often use double-entendre gags in the names of Bond girls, such as Bibi Dahl from For Your Eyes Only, Xenia Onatopp from Goldeneye, Chu Mei (chew me) from The Man With The Golden Gun, Plenty O'Toole from Diamonds Are Forever and most famously, Pussy Galore from Goldfinger. This is parodied in the Austin Powers series of spoofs on the spy genre; Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery features a villain named Alotta Fagina, who must repeat her name several times because Austin misunderstands it. This was followed up in the sequels Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me with the characters Ivana Humpalott and Felicity Shagwell, and in Austin Powers in Goldmember with the Japanese twins Fook Yu and Fook Mi, as well as the character of Dixie Normous in the film-within-a-film, Austinpussy.
The British radio program The Goon Show had a character called "Captain Hugh Jampton", which was a play on "Huge Hampton", Cockney rhyming slang (via "Hampton Wick") for "prick", i.e., "penis". BBC censors initially failed to understand the joke but later banned the character. In the animated show The Simpsons, Bart Simpson frequently calls Moe's Tavern asking for nonexistent patrons with gag names such as "Amanda Huggenkiss" (prompting Moe to call out to the patrons that he needs "a man to hug and kiss"), "Mike Rotch", "Hugh Jass" (which backfired, as there actually was a man named Hugh Jass in the bar at the time), or "Homer Sexual". (The Simpsons gags were based on a real series of prank calls made to a bar in New Jersey).
Saturday Night Live sketches sometimes make use of gag names. One starring Robert De Niro had De Niro playing a staffer at a press conference, supposedly reading "tips" called in to a national security hotline. All of the names on the list of terrorists to watch for were in fact gag names along the lines of "M'balz es-Hari", "Haid D'Salaami", "Mustaf Herod Apyur Poupr", "Usuqa M'diq", "Hous bin Phartin", and "I'zheet m'drawrz", a terrorist who fled town so fast he "left skid marks". The recurring sketch "Colonel Angus" stars Christopher Walken as an American Civil War colonel whose name sounds like "cunnilingus" when spoken in a Southern accent.
In Monty Python's Life of Brian, the title character claims to have been fathered by a Roman named Naughtius Maximus; neither Brian nor Pontius Pilate realize what is obvious to the Roman guards, that this is a gag name. This is explained to Pilate by the guards, who analogize to names such as Sillius Soddus or Biggus Dickus. Pilate responds that he has a "vewy good fwiend in Wome named Biggus Dickus", and has the guards who laugh at the name or that of Dickus' wife - Incontinentia Buttocks - thrown to the lions.
On the radio show Car Talk, the end credits begin with the real technical personnel of the show, but are extended to three or four times their natural length by the addition of multiple gag names. Perennial staffers include "Paul Murkey of Murkey Research" and his statistician "Marge Innovera" and Russian driver "Pikov Andropov" ("pick-up and drop-off); and lawyers "Dewey, Cheatham and Howe". New names are featured almost every week.
National Lampoon's High School Yearbook Parody from the early 1970s took this concept to an extreme, with "class pictures" of hundreds of students, all of which were assigned fake names (such as A. Pancho, A. Cisco). A TV ad for GEICO, which chided the abuse of person-to-person collect calls to deliver messages without paying for them, featured a man calling his parents and claiming to be "Bob Wehadababyitzaboy".[citation needed] The film The Master of Disguise (2002) featured a character named Pistachio Disguisey; this prompted film critic Roger Ebert to make a general evaluation of gag names, "the First Law of Funny Names, which is that funny names in movies are rarely funny."[2]
The original Brøderbund-produced Carmen Sandiego computer games extensively used gag names on V.I.L.E. agents, often giving them names which suggested a criminal record such as "Robin Banks", "Ivana Steele" or "Luke N. Ferloot". Later on, ACME agents were too given such names. However, the newer games created under The Learning Company seem to have abandoned this convention.
Big Johnson produced counterculture T-shirts based on the exploits of E. Normus Johnson starting in the 1980s using double entendre references to the phallic slang meaning of the term Johnson.[citation needed]
In Rowan Atkinson's 'headmaster sketch' first featured in the Secret Policeman's Ball, he refers to a Russian exchange student 'Suckmeov.'
The Ace Attorney series of games (featuring Phoenix Wright) features many characters with full or partial gag names, in both the Japanese and English language versions. In the English version, full gag names include (but are not limited to) the police detective "Dick Gumshoe" (both parts of his name being slang for "detective"), the prosecutor "Winston Payne" (who has difficulty getting his point across), and a talkative octogenarian witness named "Wendy Oldbag". Partial gag names include "Frank Sahwit" (a witness in Phoenix's very first case, who apparently "saw it" happen), a clan of spirit mediums all named "Fey", as well as others.
Much of The Twelfth Man's earlier recordings were based around joke names.
In the Bristish show "IT crowd" Jen dates a man for one episode called Peter File.
[edit] Examples in reality
On September 3, 2004, Bill O'Reilly was the butt of a prank during his show on the Fox News Channel:
- Jack Mehoffer, Springfield, Massachusetts, says: O'Reilly, I see the new Fox definition of fair and balanced means interviewing DNC chief Terry McAuliffe at both conventions.[3]
"Jack Mehoffer" is a pun for "jack me off-er", slang for male masturbation. O'Reilly, evidently unaware of the prank, may have spoiled the joke by pronouncing the last name as MAY-hoffer.
The name "Anita" is often employed in such jokes for its similarity to the phrase "I need a...", such as "Anita Bath" in the Simpsons episode "The PTA Disbands". This phrase has also been adopted in porn star names, such as Anita Blond and Anita Dark.
On April 13, 2003, James Scott of the Charleston, South Carolina, paper The Post and Courier reported that a "Heywood Jablome" (a pun for "Hey, would you blow me?", "blow" being slang for fellatio) was escorted from the premises while counterprotesting Martha Burk's protest at The Masters Tournament.[4] He subsequently admitted to his being "duped" by the protester, who was in reality a morning disc jockey for a regional FM radio station.[5]
Occasionally, real persons with a name that could also be read as a funny or vulgar phrase are the subject of mockery or parody because of their name. For example, Chinese Premier Hu Jintao, whose surname is pronounced like "who", has occasionally been the topic of "Who's on First"–type discussions. Other examples of real people with gag-sounding names are American NASCAR driver Dick Trickle, New Hampshire politician Dick Swett, Canadian critic Dick Pound, Texas philanthropist Ima Hogg, professional golfer Mike Weir ("my queer"), British politician Ed Balls, former UNC-Charlotte women's basketball player Ivana Mandic [6], Kansas City Royal's first baseman Mike Sweeney and Ivana Trump. Also, in an episode of Bam's Unholy Union, Bam Margera meets a man in a bar named Dusan Mandic (Which is a Serbian name, (pronounced "Doo-sahn Mahn-dich). Mandic even showed Bam a label, or a piece of paper [an I.D], with the name Dusan Mandic on it, providing evidence that this name was probably real. Fox News journalist, Eric Shawn ("erection") is the regular butt of jokes as well.
