The Discovery of Morniel Mathaway is a famous 1955 SF story by William Tenn (pseudonym of Philip Klass). I believe it’s one of the earliest examples of the SF trope where an important invention or (in this case) artwork is taken back in time where its “creator” sees it and then creates it by copying it, raising the question of where it came from in the first place.
Anyway, what I’m curious about is the name of the character, artist Morniel Mathaway. Both the first name and the last name are weird and rare to the point of being unique. Googling either one produces almost nothing except references to the story. The story appears to take place in the 1950s, so it’s not supposed to be an alien or futuristic name. Any ideas on where Klass may have come up with the name? It almost sounds like a parody of another name, such as Daniel Hathaway or something.
Tenn certainly wanted a name that was unusual, for two reasons:
First, it had to be a name that was believable as a famous artist name. If the name sounded common, it would be hard to believe that it would be instantly recognizable as being “that famous artist’s name” (there would be too many other “John Smiths” around for that name to work).
Second, in the 1950s, famous artists had names that sounded unusual to typical American ears (even if the names were not unusual in their native culture) - think “Pablo Picasso” or “Salvador Dalí”).
Morniel Mathaway is easily pronounceable (it’s not alien like “Exoder Zalquil” would seem), but it satisfies the two criteria above - it’s unique enough that you can believe that in the future it would be instantly recognizable, but it sounds a bit exotic.