Names matching professions: bizarre coincidence?

Factual Questions
1

A while ago I thought of compiling a list of names bizarrely suited to their professionsÑthat is, real names of real people. What triggered it was a quote by some spokesman, last name of Reel (forget the first name) who was the head of a major motion picture studio’s video division.

Then, my dad went under the knife, and his surgeon’s name was–you guessed it–Dr. Payne. But my dad, groggy though he was under the anesthetic, managed to croak “Well at least you’re not Cardinal Sin.”

Now IÕm not averse to someone named Carpenter being in the lumber industry, but some of these coincidences are just too spooky. One is forced to conclude that the name one is born with (through jokes made about it, perhaps) might actually lead someone to fulfill the prophecy–like David Bird, a columnist for my local paper who writes about . . . umm, birds.

Does anyone else have some real-life examples of this weird phenomena? IÕm sure there must be some website somewhere dedicated to it.

2

Try googling “nominative determinism”.

3

I work for a bank and trimmed names for privacy:

A while back, I set up M. Money at work, and one of the Unix system administrators is Penny C. A fellow named B. Check is in one of our check processing facilties.

Years ago, my optometrist was Dr. Winkler.

4

I love it (from Google): " . . . Barnacle’s decision to become a marine timber expert . . ."

5

And I’m SURE that there was someone early on in this Gulf war called something like “Brigadier-General Sargent” (the last being the spelling of his surname, not the rank of sergeant. What humiliation!)

6

Oh, I almost forgot to mention: last summer I had an abcess under my armpit and I went to see a doctor who happened to be called Portnoy! Naturally, I had to complain, so I sent him an email (at the end of treatment, of course) which went:

(Sund to the tune of “My Way”)

Complaints, I have a few
Oh yes, a few IÕd like to mention
My friend, IÕll say it clear
I wish I had your kind of pension.

Show up, each day for work
ÔTween ailing folk, practice your golf swing
But more, much more than this,
You made me cry, yeah.

I was in pain, you fixed me up
Your brand of care beyond description
You squeezed too hard, I yelled a lot
You walked away, wrote a prescription.

You planned, each charted scream
Each careful rip, of every bandage
But more, much more than this,
You made me cry, yeah.

Why did you squeeze? What had you wrought
If not my pain, in GodÕs name what?
This patient screamed, he gave a shout
Of his Òdiscomfort,Ó he let it out
The record shows, I took the blows
You made me cry, yeah.

He never replied.

7

When I was at Saint Louis University in the 1970s, there was a philosophy professor named Apathy and a math professor named Factor.

I am not making this up.

8

My mother’s OB/Gyn when she was pregnant with my brother was Dr. Hymen.
I bet that poor guy took some ribbing…

9

This is rapidly approaching MPSIMS but…

The oral surgeon who pulled my wisdome teeth…Dr. Hurtz.

Haj

10

Uh, Dr. Hertz.

Haj

11

There used to be a man named Pike who worked for L.L.Bean’s fishing business.

12

I once worked with a SGT Sargent.

13

I work in a hospital and have a text pager. The other day I received a page from Dr. Kuntz, OB Gyn

14

former Optomitrists…Dr.s Kahn and Diel.

15

About 80 gazillion kabillion columnists in every newspaper in the U.S. have collected these names over the years. There are a lot of words in the English language with connotations and a lot of people with names which sound like them, however vaguely or contortedly.

16

I notice it all the time among porn movie actors.

Strippers, too: “Your parents named you Chandelier Chesty? No wonder you became a stripper!”