I don’t remember too clearly, because I read this in school and was trying not to let the joy get flogged out of the book, but I think it had to do with her as a seeker of the truth that was just barely hidden beneath her reality. It wasn’t so obvious as to be an aptronym, I don’t think. It was more of a reference to classical literature, like Stephen Dedalus.
And Scarlett herself was considered to be quite the scarlet woman.
And we can’t forget (from Monty Python’s Life of Brian)… Biggus Dickus, and his charming wife, Incontinentia Buttocks.
The practice goes back at least to Shakespeare. E.g., Benvolio (good-will) in Romeo & Juliet, Malvolio (bad-will) in Twelfth Night.
18th Century: Squire Allworthy in Fielding’s Tom Jones. Practically every character in Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera: The bandit MacHeath (lord/son of the heath); the informer Peachum (the impeacher).
Simon Templar
Thackeray used a lot of aptronyms: In Vanity Fair there was Lord Bareacres, Viscount Castlemouldy, and of course the wicked Marquis of Steyne; as well as the disgusting baronet Sir Pitt Crawley. I suppose there was some reason he named his most sympathetic character, the honest and kindly grocer’s son, “Dobbin,” but I’m not sure what the name signified in cultural context.
I’m pretty sure this was a nickname of “Sawbones,” something doctors were called in days of yore.
And you’re right about Scarlett, Annie; I almost added that myself.
And, of course, “Scotty” was based on the cultural stereotype (in the English-speaking world) that most engineers are Scottish.
Quoth Elendil’s Heir:
Was it ever established that those were apt, though?
And since BrainGlutton mentions Shakespeare, we can’t forget about Mistress Quickly.
In Gone With the Wind, Belle Watling was obviously able to give a “good wailing.”
Pre-graphic novel writer Kenneth Robeson in his Doc Savage: Man of Bronze books has:
Monk–a large, gorilla-ish fellah
Ham–a bookish yet dramatic sort (given the nickname because of an incident with smoked pig, but still)
And Doc Savage himself, a guy who feels he must carefully control himself lest he, um, go wild.
There are lots of them in “Atlas Shrugged”–the protagonists all have heroic rugged-individualist names like “John Galt,” “Hank Rearden,” and “Dagny Taggart,” while many of the antagonists have weak or ridiculous names (Wesley Mouch, Kiki Holloway, Cuffy Meigs, Balph Eubank, Kip Chalmers, and so on.)
The ever delightful (ha) Xanth series has descriptive name puns up the wazoo.
The demons in particular are all dubbed Demon [something or other] in a fashion that suggests their personality.
Metria (demetria, the inability to use the correct words) even has two other personalities: Mentia (demential, insanity) and Woe Betide (as in “woe betide he who breaks this seal”).
And what of DIRK PITT?! Surely no name could be more apt to a character than that of DIRK PITT! Because there is only one person rugged and manly enough to be named DIRK PITT, and that’s DIRK PITT! Except now he has a son! Who is also named… DIRK PITT! *"Paging Mr. DIRK PITT… would Mr. *DIRK PITT ** please pick up the white courtesy phone; you have a call from a Mr. DIRK PITT!"
Robert Silverberg’s uber-'70s SF novel **Son of Man ** is about a modern-day human who gets swept up into some type of time vortex and lands a billion-odd years in the future, where humans have developed their technology to the point where they can achieve personal fulfillment by directly reshaping their bodies. The protagonist’s name is Clay.
And of course there’s Orson Scott Card’s novel Ender’s Game, which tells the story of young Andrew Wiggin, who is of course called “Ender,” since this is a so much more common nickname than “Andy” or “Drew.” Ender gets caught up in the machinations of Earth’s military training program, which is trying to produce an ultimate strategist who will finally end a decades-long interstellar war. I don’t want to spoil the book for anyone, so I’ll just say that one of the characters does in fact end the war. Card won both the Hugo and Nebula awards for managing to present this material with a straight face.
There is Bugs Meany, from Encyclopedia Brown.
The practice goes way back to antiquity. The most glaring and accessible example is Oedipus: οιδα πουσ / oida pous, the foot knows.
I thought it meant “pierced foot,” and that he was called that because his foot was pierced when he was found.
I think the Hammer/Nail thing goes further than this:
Hamm: Hammer
Clov: French clou, “nail”
Nagg: German nagel, “nail”
Nell: Cognate for English nail?
(I’m not going to pretend I was the first to discover this; I read it somewhere ages ago, in grad school. And the “nagging” father and “death knell” mother are certainly relevant.)
To follow up on Oedipa Maas in The Crying of Lot 49: I think the name refers more to Oedipus’s status as riddle-solver rather than as truth-seeker or incest-committer. The reference is ironic though, because the book basically turns the mystery genre on its head:
[spoiler]She discovers a mystery, but as the book progresses, it just gets bigger and bigger until it threatens to encompass the whole world. There’s no “a-ha!” moment, no final resolution when we’re able to assimilate the unexplained facts back into our previous worldview. She’s named after the world’s most famous solver of riddles, but ends up doing the opposite.
(Not sure the spoiler tag was necessary, since there’s no Big Secret to reveal, but then I suppose that itself is the book’s Big Secret.)[/spoiler]
Wikipedia says ‘swollen foot’, but it operates on several levels. There’s his foot-related answer to the sphinx, the fact that Laius and Jocasta should have known him for his feet, there’s his destiny etc.
And Oedipus is one of the few Greek tragic heroes who doesn’t kill himself (unlike most of the rest of his family).
Either way, though, it’s not like the bounder Josiah Bounderby or the evil schoolmaster M’Choakumchild.