Tuesday 15 September 2009

Johnny Unitas or Ernst Hanfstaengl?

These are my two favourite names today. Partly because they are great names, but mainly because you couldn't make up better ones for what these people were.

Johnny Unitas was a superhero American football quarterback (his surname was an Ellis Island phoneticisation of the Luthuanian Jonaitis). Hanfstaengl was Hitler's foreign press chief, and at the World Economic Conference in London in 1933 (yes, I am still slowly reading Lords of Finance) one observer found him charming, but a Nazi to the tips of his tailoring - he favoured a milk chocolate suit, with matching shirt and tie. This is something Alastair Campbell could not have pulled off.

1 comment:

John Finnemore said...

One of the librarians in the Science 2 reading room is called Tallulah Snape.