Name Search

Your Monday Photo Shoot: Take a picture of something that relates to your name. It can be your first name, or your last name, or of your middle name (we're not picky). Even nicknames work. And since this is AOL, if you want you may use your screenname as well. Basically, if a name relates to you, let's see a picture of a representation.

Oh, I had plans for this entry. I was going to do one picture for each name: my old marble name sign from Worldwide Travel for "Karen" or possibly "Blocher," a picture of a volume from Funk & Wagnall, and, well, maybe the name sign at my current job. I also thought of showing you my name in my first book publication (aside from one foreword that I wrote under a pseudonym).

But my nameplate refused to turn up, and the Dell Book of Logic Problems I found was not the one with "Five Proud Mothers" in it. I couldn't find my Relix magazines with my early bylines, I left my camera on the bed this morning and therefore couldn't take a photo at work, and we apparently don't have any reference books by Funk and Wagnalls, despite the fact that I grew up with their encyclopedia. It wasn't a very good one.

I thought of trying to find our Laugh-In LP, because they had a running gag, "Look that up in your Funk and Wagnalls." I thought of looking for records by George Clinton or James Brown. But there are too many boxes between me and our record collection. Ah, well.

Still, I did eventually find a couple of Starlog magazines:




Okay, okay. Maybe I can come up with something a bit less egotistical. As I so often do, these days, I turn to Wikipedia for help.



So I type in "Karen" on Wikipedia. and get a "disambiguation" page, listing numerous articles about something or someone called Karen. The most interesting one: the Karen languages, which "are spoken by the Karen people." Well, of course they are. But they're not talking about Mâvarinû, Londran or Lopartin, as spoken by Rani, Talber and Danali, respectively. No, these languages are called Sgaw, Pwo, and Pa'o, from the "Tibeto-Burman group of the Sino-Tibetan language family." The article neglects to mention exactly where these languages are spoken, but let's assume it's somewhere around Tibet.


The word "funk" takes us straight to an article on the music of James Brown, George Clinton et al. But there is a big article about Funk and Wagnalls as well. Funk is, of course, the name that gave me the most trouble as a kid. Taunts that "Funk the skunk is a pile of junk" were almost benign compared to other possibilities. Yet when I got married, I couldn't bear to give up the name that helped to shape who I am.


Typing in Blocher gives us one Christoph Blocher, "the Swiss minister of justice." The article had a substantial Controversy section, but I didn't stay to find out why. I assume he pronounces it Block'-er, as we do. So why do people always get it wrong?

Enough. Good night!

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