Akira Trilingual Tetraglot Newbie Singapore Joined 6828 days ago 11 posts - 12 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Cantonese*, Japanese Studies: French
| Message 25 of 140 17 March 2006 at 1:12am | IP Logged |
My favourite is academic Dr. Harry G. Cocks who published papers on homosexuality and sodomy.
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RogueRook Diglot Senior Member Germany N/A Joined 6832 days ago 174 posts - 177 votes 6 sounds Speaks: German*, English Studies: Hungarian, Turkish
| Message 26 of 140 17 March 2006 at 3:27am | IP Logged |
Okay my 2 cents:
A German TV comedian of Arab-Turk descent:
His turkish name is Kaya Yanar, literal meaning:
Stone Inflamable - hilarious
Guess most Germans aren't aware of this.
It should be noted that surnames weren't used in the Ottoman Empire. Atatürk introduced them in the 20's and so people made up their own surnames that sound strange to us:
Öztürk - a real turk
Özdemir - real steel
Yildirim - Lightning
A comprehensive map of silly German town names:
http://www.fanlager.de/klatsch-und-tratsch/lustigste-staedte namen-deutschlands-9551.html
Cannot translate them all due to time constraints, but here are my top picks:
Regenmantel - rain coat
Tuntenhausen - faggot town
Böß-Gesäß - evil buttocks
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Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish
| Message 27 of 140 21 December 2006 at 2:13pm | IP Logged |
Lugubert wrote:
Hencke wrote:
And then of course there is the Austrian (or was it German) town of W-a-n-k-i-n-g] |
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Yes, Austrian.
Quote:
what about Sc**thorpe ? - Yes, that seems to be censored too (the two missing letters are u and n). That is so silly. |
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I was puzzled for a few seconds, and then I remembered that on another forum there is a Filter(TM) censoring even the title of Rembrandt's famous painting, the N-i-g-h-t-w-a-t-c-h. Having driven through Sc***... a couple of times, I would never have guessed the linguistically nonsensical reaction towards the letters c-u-n-t. |
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hehe, I know a Russian forum in which the word Becherovka written with cyrillic letters gets censored, because "her" (xep) is a word for dick, originally it was just the title of the letter X, but people said it when they didn't want to say huy (which is btw a Chinese name sounding very funny to Russians - on TV and on the radio it's usually pronounced as Hu)
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SwedishChef Bilingual Pentaglot Newbie Sweden Joined 6661 days ago 9 posts - 10 votes Speaks: English*, Swedish*, French, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Italian
| Message 28 of 140 21 December 2006 at 4:08pm | IP Logged |
I know a man called Dick Major.
It's extra funny to see his name on letters when
they write his last name first :)
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Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6582 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German
| Message 29 of 140 23 December 2006 at 5:23pm | IP Logged |
During the wonderful Swedish TV show "Värsta språket", I remember a piece about strange town names. "Njutånger" (literally "pleasure regret") was in it, and my all-time favourite "Stora stjärtvecket" ("The Large buttcrack").
There used to be a great website for funny Swedish town names, but I can't find it now. Here's a list that might be copied from there, though. For you Swedish learners, it could be a nice test of your Swedish skills to see if you get what's so funny in all of them. "Valefittan" ("Whale's c*nt") has got to be the best.
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brumblebee Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6775 days ago 206 posts - 212 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese
| Message 30 of 140 23 December 2006 at 9:40pm | IP Logged |
Yeah, I can think of many people with funny names.
My friend has a friend whose parents were from Vietnam, and his middle name is f**k, but it isn't pronounced that way (it's pronounced like "fook")
I think my friend's sister knows a guy whose name is spelled "P-h-u-k" (but it's also pronounced like "fook")
My mom knew a person name Penny Nichols and she also knew a guy named Rusty Nail. Poor people.
I know someone whose name is Merritt Steele. I think it's very unique but cool.
Edited by brumblebee on 23 December 2006 at 9:41pm
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Sir Nigel Senior Member United States Joined 7104 days ago 1126 posts - 1102 votes 2 sounds
| Message 31 of 140 25 December 2006 at 12:04am | IP Logged |
I've not met the ones with interesting names, but my friend knew of someone with the name of Log Thong. Vietnamese perhaps?
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SamD Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6659 days ago 823 posts - 987 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese, Norwegian
| Message 32 of 140 27 December 2006 at 9:56am | IP Logged |
administrator wrote:
I would ask people not to include any 'funny' African-American or European Jewish surnames. Some of these people's ancestors had suddendly been assigned new names by local officials due to legislative changes and sometimes they tried to make jokes on the poor people (Mr Snowwhite or Mr Blumenthal, etc...). I prefer if we don't mention such names in this context as this would be cruel and inappropriate. Thanks. |
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Perhaps the best names to include in this thread would be names that mean something amusing in a language not commonly spoken in a place where the speaker lives. According to an article I read in a US magazine, a number of Chinese English-learners have adopted names that sound mellifluous to them, but have names that shock native speakers of English. I'm not sure I would be allowed to post some of the most humorous examples here.
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