“I’m Zaphod Beeblebrox, my father is Zaphon Beeblebrox the Second, my grandfather is Zaphod Beeblebrox the Third — there was an accident with a time machine and a contraceptive.”
The protagonist–no, make that the hero–of Jack London’s The Iron Heel is Ernest Everhard.
File that under “Characters Who Already Have Their Porn Names”.
Not a novel, but one of my favorite short stories is by Frederick Forsyth, and appears in his collection of short works entitled No Comebacks. It’s called Money With Menaces, and concerns a pudgy little Englishman named Samuel Nutkin. His entire life, it would seem, he had been plagued by bullies who found his resemblance to a squirrel just too irresistible to pass up, and tormented him unceasingly with Beatrix Potter-inspired epithets. A timid man, ill-disposed to licentious behavior, Mr. Nutkin surprises himself by actually responding to a call girl’s ad in a smutty magazine (discovered underneath the cushion of his seat on the commuter train). If you’ve read Forsyth’s more substantial works (The Day of the Jackal, The Odessa File, The Devil’s Alternative), then you’ve a pretty good idea of what to expect. A beautifully twisted little tale.
Amanda McKittrick Ros, as I recall, had some real winners (?).“In her novel Helen Huddleston; they include Lord Raspberry and his sister Cherry, Sir Peter Plum, the Earl of Grape and Sir Christopher Currant, while the maid is given a name appropriate to her status - Lily Lentil.”
I seem to remember even worse ones from other books.