Name it

I don't know where it comes from, but I have a fascination with people and their names.  Their real names, their fake names, their aliases all strike me as interesting.

And I often try to imagine the conversation between two new parents, people with a last name such as McCracken, as they decide to name their little boy "Phillip."

And thanks to my parents, by the way, for christening me with a ready-made radio name.  Somehow, they just knew....

But, you know the singer Vic Damone? He's great, or he was. He is retired now but you still hear his songs; he was a singer of standards, pop songs of the 40s and 50s.  Now, his real name at birth was Vito Farinola! And I submit that that name sounds more like a song than the name he chose! In fact, I can just hear him singing it..."Veeeee-tooooo FarrrrriNOOOOOOOOOOLA!"

The great English actor (all English actors are great to us!) Benedict Cumberbatch was truly born for the stage and screen, even though Americans have an aversion to the name Benedict since the Revolutionary War.

How about that guy Skeet Ulrich, the actor they always hire when Johnny Depp is too busy? He was born Bryan Ray Trout. Nice tradeup. 

Jean-Claude Van Damme, who liked to be called "The Muscles From Brussels," was called Jean-Claude Camille François Van Varenberg at birth in Belgium, where the birth certificates must have lots of space for such things.

Back in America, the guy who played Inigo Montoya in "The Princess Bride," shares with our female cat "Eddie" the problems of having a cross-gendered nickname. Mandy Patinkin was born Mandel Patinkin.

And there is every likelihood that Texas Battle, the actor who played Marcus Forrester on The Bold And The Beautiful, has been called "Tex" a million times deep in the heart of...

One last nickname that really tears me up...Rip Torn, a great American actor, was born Elmore Rual Torn, Jr. "Rip Torn" inspired a lot of imitators, such as "Rex Carr" the NASCAR driver and "Dr Lance Boyle," my dermatologist. (Not really.)

What brought all this to mind was the happy confluence on my iPod the other night as I paraded around the neighborhood of two tunes. Totally at random, the tiny soundbox played Chubby Wise sawing his fiddle through "Down Yonder" right after Chubby Checker put a hop in my step with "Pony Time."

Chubby Checker, who put us all in a "Twist," was known as Ernest Evans, Jr, where he was raised in South Philadelphia. After a few hit dance songs, he now spends his time insisting that "invented dancing apart," which is not quite accurate.  I love "Pony Time" because there's something about being told what to do by the singer when you dance ("Now ya turn to the left when I say gee,
You turn to the right when I say haw, Now gee, ya ya baby, Now haw...")

Robert Russell "Chubby" Wise was one of the best fiddlers that country music ever knew. He played in Hank Snow's band "The Rainbow Ranch Boys," and, as is customary in that genre, when it was his turn to play in the spotlight, Hank (born Clarence Snow) would holler "Chubby!" and away he'd go.

That's Chubby on the far left and Hank in red.

Trust me, if you're on trial and your attorney asks his associate to step up and handle the interrogation on a tricky part of your care, you don't want to hear him call "Chubby" to the bench.

And yes, it's fine to be called "Cookie" if you're a ballplayer, but you don't want that to be the name of your cardiologist...