R. A. Salvatore. He has a male assassin named Artemis Entreri, a heroine named Cattie-Brie, and a black panther named Gwenhyfar (sp?). I find them all wildly innapp)ropriate.
(Brie is a cheese, Artemis was a virgin goddess, and Gwenhyfar comes from the Welsh for “white lady.”
Yeah, I’m still waiting for a villainess named Nockers Nuclearè.
And her sidekick Cox Blocer.
Guenhwyvar is the welsh version of Guenevere, the wife of King Arthur. And while Artemis was originally a Greek goddess, it’s also a man’s first name.
I do not, however, have a defense for Cattie-Brie, much less the most egregious offender in the series, Drizzt Do’Urden.
I’d just like to point out that Genghis Cohen is (or was) the name of a kosher Chinese restaurant.
And from Catch-22, how about General P.P. Peckem?
As my user name might indicate, I’m a David Foster Wallace fan. Wallace did wonderful things with character names; to wit:
The Broom of the System
Judith Prietht
Mindy Metalman
Candy Mandible
Rick Vigorous, partner of publishing firm Frequent & Vigorous
Infinite Jest
Hal Incandenza, tennis/lexical prodigy and son of famed filmmaker James Orin Incandenza
Ortho “The Darkness” Stice, fellow tennis academy student
The assorted names of the kids who attend the Enfield Tennis Academy: LaMont Chu, Petropolis Kahn, Idris Arslanian, Ann Kittenplan to name a few.
Nobody’s mentioned Bonanza Jellybean yet?
Robert Anton Wilson, in the Illumuinatus! Trilogy, introduces us to characters bearing such names as Danny Pricefixer, Markoff Chaney, Atalanta Hope, Epicene Wildeblood, and Marvin Gardens.
In his long-running newspaper comic strip Dick Tracy, Chester Gould practically made a trademark of bizarrely named characters – besides all those descriptively-named villains like Pouch, Piggy, Matty Square, Measles, and Gargles, the strip was also peopled by folks with names like Vitamin Flintheart, B.O. Plenty and Diet Smith.
Marvin Gardens is in the Schroedinger’s Cat books. Definitely a ridiculous name, though. And come to think of it there is a Nazi zombie named Hanfgeist (hemp ghost).
Not to mention a track star named Juan Tootrego and another character named Natalie Drest.
And Gravity’s Rainbow(I think) gives us a character named Joaquin Stick.
I can remember the day I gave up reading Dick Tracy. “Roloc Bard? What kind of stupid name is Roloc Bard? Oh, it’s “Drab Color” backwards. Wait… what? Fuck this.” I don’t know why that pushed me over the edge, but I think it must have followed a series of inane strips.
May I reanimate this zombie thread?
Geoffrey Rush’s evil-genius character in Mystery Men is named Casanova Frankenstein.
Hannibal Lecter. What are the odds that he would turn out to be a cannibal?
Another nod to Vonnegut in Breakfast of Champions;
Harry LeSabre, a Pontiac salesman. It is even mentioned in the book his boss did not hold his name (LaSabre) against him, even though it was the name of a competing Buick auto.
And has anyone mentioned Kilgore Trout?
If I may be forgiven for citing another SF novel, I’ve always loved that Philip K. Dick translated his own name for the VALIS character Horselover Fat.
In one of Toni Morrison’s novels, perhaps Song Of Solomon but I’m not certain, there’s a character called First Corinthians Dead. Remarkably, that’s a perfectly reasonable name for her, in the context of the story.
I’ve had two students called Brie. Neither of their parents seemed - how can I put this politely - like the reading type, so I doubt they were named for the book. Or the cheese, for that matter; the parents didn’t seem like the Brie-eating type either. As mentioned upthread, sometimes real people have odd names.
Somewhere, I can imagine Trihs Der either rolling up shirtsleeves to beat you bloody, or cowering in a corner, crying.
[Note: I have had practically ZERO interaction with Trihs Der, and will not speak to their state of mind and/or actions. I was merely commenting on the fact that you mentioned that someone’s name backwards “pushed [you] over the edge.” In other words, it was a joke.]
What about Prince Humperdinck? I realize it was a reference to Englebert Humperdinck, and also to the composer of Hansel und Gretel, but it’s still a weird name.
A lot of the looter characters in Ayn Rand’s novels have ridiculous or ineffectual names. For the most part you can tell who’s “good” and who’s “bad” by their names. Some examples: Wesley Mouch, Ellsworth M. Toohey, Balph (not Ralph, he hastens to correct) Eubank, Cuffy Meigs, and Kip Chalmers.
Mystery Men is a super-hero comedy…if half the characters didn’t have ridiculous names, it wouldn’t be on-theme.
(‘Serious’ real names for supervillains include Roy G Bivlo (the Rainbow Raider), Johnny Onn (the Spot), Edward Nygma (the Riddler - latter retconned to Nashton, but I refuse to accept that), Mitchell Mayo (the Condiment King)…)
These types of names, incidentally, are called charactonyms–and I can’t believe no one has yet brought up Sinclair Lewis!