Just an odd piece of trivia that doesn’t really lend itself well to an OP, so I’ll just mention it as is. Sea Monkeys™, the great American comic-book and dimestore sold classic humbug, were the brainchild of Harold von Braunhut, a Tennessee-born NYC reared mail order millionaire who also marketed the Kiyoga Agent M-5, a spring loaded instant billy club whose profits were split with the Aryan Nations (whose leader, aerospace engineer Richard Butler, was a close friend of von Braunhut). In addition, though von Braunhut often wore clerical collar and garb and performed marriages and services for the Aryans as the priest of a self-formed church, and though racist and anti-Semitic propaganda pseudonymously authored by one “Hendrik von Braun” was published by a press whose mailing address was the same as von Branhut’s, he was born Jewish (mother’s name: Jeanette Cohen from a Jewish family in Memphis TN) and probably barmitzvahed. (Butler and The Aryan Nations did not know this until 1998, but to prove that neo-Nazis aren’t all bad and can be very forgiving they continued to accept his money.)
Well it’s M&P&SIMS. No real conclusion to make except “damn that’s weird” and add it to my trivial wet-ware files. This sounds almost like something Vonnegut would have come up with (a Jew who becomes a Nazi who makes millions from selling dehydrated shrimp eggs anthropomorphized to children). Also makes me wish I had the $5 or whatever I spent on Sea Monkeys over the years back.
PS: von Braunhut (the “von” was something he adapted and legally added to his name) was also the man responsible for the X-Ray glasses in comic book ads.
Anyone adding fake titles of nobility to their names should be pissed on. It disgusts me to read about pretentious fucks adding vans and vons and de’s to their surnames or adopting old titled names, as in the pretentious Israel Ehrenburg changing his name to Ashley Montagu, or the architect Mies Van Der Rohe, or whomever. This, in my opinion, is one of the most weasely things someone can do.
Thank goodness the Nazis never successfully developed that technology.
By the way, Argent Towers, Lars von Trier probably belongs on your list. He was born Lars Trier, and I’ve read that he adopted the “von” part after people started using it as a nickname.
An opposite is Admiral Chester Nimitz. He was born “von Nimitz” but thought it sounded too foreign and pompous. The Vonnegut family (like the Vanderbilts) compounded the “of” part into their regular surnames just like the “de’” and “de la”'s in my own hillbilly family lines (for example, one branch of my family is Swiss Huguenot and had a surname that honored a 17th century martyred preacher and pronounced something like “day rah-Mooz”, but today there are thousands of them, the vast majority in Alabama with the most famous association being their sausage and the surname, now spelled several different ways, now pronounced ‘DRAM-mus’- sorry, irrelevant, but I love the evolution of names).
Kellner is right, Argent Towers. “Van”, and “de” and “van der” iare very common part of Dutch and Flemish surnames. I don’t know about the German “von” though and the French “de”, though, maybe abother Doper can clear those up.
For instance, my perfectly ordinary Dutch name is “Caroline van Lastname”. Mies van der Rohe is also a perfectly ordinary Dutch name. The Flemish will usually attach the “van” to their names, so that would look like “Caroline Vanlastname”. The name Gloria Vanderbilt looks Flemish to me, not posh, like it does to an American ear.
Dutch nobility will have names like “Caroline van Lastname van Anotherlastname”. Or for really posh nobility, “Caroline van Lastname tot Anotherlastname”.
If I ever get married, my name will become “Caroline Husbandsname-van Lastname”, as the “-” indicates marriage, not the double names of nobility.
Harold Nathan Braunhut was born on March 31 1926 in Memphis, Tennessee, USA. He was raised by his Jewish family in New York city.
He added the von in the early 1950s. He liked made-up names. He raced motorcycles as “The Green Hornet.”
In addition Sea Monkeys (Artemia nyos) he also developed X-ray Spex and Invisable Goldfish.
In the 1980s, the Washington Post ran a story saying he as involved with “some of the most extreme racist and anti-semitic organisations in the country.” As a result, his business suffered a great deal as distributors refused to renew contracts.
He held almost 200 US patents. At the time of his death, he was working on pet lobsters and instant frogs.
He died on 28 November 2003 in Maryland. He was survived by his wife, Yolanda and a son.
