In which bad naming ensues

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

My brother has just informed me of one of the worst place names I have ever heard of.

During his year in Israel, he had a classmate from a certain northern moshav. This moshav was named after one Rabbi Yehiel Michal Pines.

Now, I have no idea how the Family Pines pronounced their name when in Europe. I don’t know if Rabbi Pines himself started saying it differently when he moved to Jerusalem, or after he befriended Eliezer Ben-Yehuda. But in modern Hebrew? Apparently you say it as “פִּינֶס”. For those of you who don’t read Hebrew, that’s “Peeness”.

Yes, there’s really a place called Penis Village. Yes, most Israelis speak English, and know exactly how it sounds.

Perhaps that’s where the guy with the fifteen-inch trouser snake was headed.

(This may be stupid and juvenile, but I’ve had a family tragedy and I’m taking laffs where I can get em. So just enjoy the ensuing penisment).

2

Don’t agree anything rises to the level of unfortunate here.

  1. Isn’t one Guy Pines a popular (daily?) television show host in Israel? Apparently he is doing OK.

  2. The pronunciation of the Rabbi’s name does not match either the Latin or English pronunciation of “penis”.

  3. Even if it did… so what? I have not heard about Jacques Tits changing his name, nor the village of Fucking changing its.

3

Swaaaaastika Acres is the place to be…

4

Oh, Denver has some good ones. My first house was in Horr’s Addition to the City of Denver. Go on, say it.

5

The Victoria town of Kilmore, home of the the Kilmore Hospital and Kilmore Medical Practise, definitely deserves to be on this list

6

A friend of mine got promoted at work to Vice President. So we were discussing how to address him.

“Your highness?”

“Nah. He’s only a VP.”

“Your VP-ness?”

“YES!”

7

When I was a kid, our family dentist was Dr. Achen. (And, yes, he does pronounce it with a long “A”.)

His office was in the same building as an obstetrician named Dr. Love.

8

Dentist named Dr. Payne. He wasn’t real popular.

9

I used to work with a guy that named his newborn daughter “Harley”. This was about 1990, well before Harley Quinn of DC comics achieved wide public awareness. I often wondered about how she came to feel about his naming choice.

10

There’s a Dr. G. Aycock whose sign I keep seeing.

11

Running from Moonachie to Little Ferry in New Jersey is Redneck Avenue.

12

My current favorite is Dickshooter, ID.

13

One of our customer contact’s last name is Bunshaft. How did that family survive middle school? How about a woman marrying someone with a name like that? Do you say, no thanks, I’ll keep my last name?

14

It should be twinned with Penistone in Yorkshire, UK

15

It’s spelled out right there in the Wikipedia article. With helpful vowels underneath. פִּינֶס. How else would you say it, if not pee-ness? I have no idea WTF it would be transliterated that way. But I can’t argue with the fact that it happened.

Not to mention, like I said, that my brother knew a kid from the place. And he (the kid) thought the name was embarrassing.

16

You are absolutely right: the name is pronounced pee-ness. But in English the membrum virile is pronounced pee-nis.

I don’t know about embarrassing, but please remember that in Israel most people’s first language is not English, so why would they care about name collisions more than the Austrians or the Penistonians or whoever? Anyway, I found Guy Pines!

17

Most Israelis do know English. Anyway, I find it funny, because I have the heart of a twelve year old.

18

My mother used to see a Dr. Hertz.

I used to work with a fellow whose last name was Bates. It took me exactly one time calling him Mr. Bates* to realize why I had really only ever heard people call him by his first name.

*Really, even if you say it the lovely way Joanne Froggatt does on Downton Abbey, you can’t not hear it.

19

Go down to Texas and you can visit the Jewish Community Center of Corpus Christi.

For those who don’t know, “Corpus Christi” is “Body of Christ” in Latin.

20

There’s also a synagogue or two in Christchurch, NZ.