Name Crazy
Paperback: 220
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Language: English
ISBN-10: 067163187X
From the Publisher
Jane: One of the four caustics; potash, soda; acid, and Jane. John: Short for “Jump-On-His-Neck,” an old racing term used to exhort jockeys who are sitting too far back on their mounts. In this remarkably useful little book, you will find the real origins of over 360 names, from Agnes to Rambo, from Darwin to Woody (“the eight dwarf, after Doc, Grumpy, Sleepy, Bashful, Dopey, Jumpy, and Mike”). Here you will find the truth about your name. It doesn’t mean “one who is wise beyond all knowing.” no, it has a lot to do with Helga, the butch goddess of mayonnaise. Sometimes the truth hurts, but when Lewis Frumkes, the author of How to Raise Your I.Q. by Eating Gifted Children, tells it, it’s also very funny
From the Author
One year I wrote a humor piece in which I pretended to be an onomast, someone who studies the origins of first names. I sold the comic piece first to Punch in London, the oldest humor magazine in the world, and then in another format to a woman’s magazine in this country. Soon I pitched it as a book and the Fireside division of Simon & Schuster bought it. It was a zany book which I loved writing and while it didn’t sell millions of copies because bookstores didn’t know quite where to place it, an interesting friendship with the great comedienne Phyllis Diller resulted from it. One day I got a call from Chicago supposedly from Phyllis Diller who was a giant at the time. I doubted it but took the call and sure enough it was Phyllis who said she loved Name Crazy and wanted me to collaborate on a book with her. She was coming to Ne w York in a couple of weeks and wouldn’t I come to her birthday party. We became great friends and Phyllis even threw a party in my honor at her home in Los Angeles, a sit down dinner with Bob and Delores Hope, Carol Channing and the producer of Baywatch. Butlers served Chinese food, and Carol Channing gave us all faux diamonds as little gifts to remind us of Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend. All this from Name Crazy.
