I think that it has to be mundane otherwise they are going to have to explain why no jokes have ever been made. If Sci-Fi or science related, Sheldon would have had to crack, “unlike our local Einstein”. If punny like money, Raj or Howard would have made the funny.
I don’t know who or what Penny Lane is. Seriously.
Beatles song
It’s a song by the Beatles, originally a Double A Side with Strawberry Fields Forever.
(Both songs are named for locations near John’s home in Liverpool.)
Springfield.
There is also the possiblity that the guys do not know her real name. She is an actress and could be going by a stage name for SAG/Equity reasons. They may know her as Penny <stagename> and find out she is really <cool geek reference name>.
That’s my guess too.
Simpson?
We’ll learn that Penny is her last name, but everybody including her family calls her that. Her first is Wheat, named after her father’s cash crop.
Or, her last name will be Senvy or some other play on ‘penis’.
Middle name Rachel,
Last name Quaid.
Penny R Quaid, or Penny Arcade
Since her face is overly midwestern*, suggesting Scandanavian or Germanic ancestry, I’m guessing it’ll be something like Anderson or Schneider.
*S02E03, The Barbarian Sublimation, definitely in the top 5 best episodes
In a world of true comic book fans, it must start with “P”.
Perhaps “Pascal”? (You have to rule out “Ptolemy”, unfortunately.)
Leonard would surely know it. He picks up her mail and such all the time. That might limit the more famous “P” geek names.
Lincoln
Penny Lane is a Paul song though.
And yeah, although Sheldon might not be familiar with the hits of The Beatles, and maybe not Raj (being Indian), I am sure Leonard and certainly Howard would know them.
So no, not Lane.
Penny Parker, after Teri Hatcher’s recurring character on MacGyver.
Would she have a brother named “Peter”?
And the name was inspired by a location near John’s place - these two points are not contradictory.
Again - Leonard didn’t know Tweety Bird, one of the major characters in one of his particular fields of geekery (cartoons and comics), and he’s demonstrated a complete lack of knowledge of popular music (or unpopular music).
Of the two, it’s Tweety Bird that he’d be more likely to know, and yet, he doesn’t. It’s totally within the bounds of his character to not know the Beatles.
We haven’t seen any particularly odd limits to Howard’s knowledge, but he’s in his mid-late 20s, and has never shown any particular interest in music, so it wouldn’t be surprising if he didn’t know them any more than heathen earthling did.
Pasta?
These’s a huge sparsely populated county in Nebraska named “Cherry”…
Pitstop.
You win.
(I also had no idea we didn’t know Penny’s last name.)