# Who are some "fictional" characters who really existed? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 27, 2005, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-some-fictional-characters-who-really-existed/305701 "2005-05-27T02:01:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![OxyMoron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/e9a140/32.png) [@OxyMoron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OxyMoron)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2005, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-some-fictional-characters-who-really-existed/305701/61 "2005-05-28T14:41:14Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > I was surprised to find out that [Learned Hand](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_Hand) was not only a real name, but a real judge as well. > > “The mid-day sun is too much for most eyes; one is dazzled even with its reflection. Be careful that too broad and high an aim does not paralyze your effort and clog your springs of action.” is one of [his quotes](http://www.commonlaw.com/Hand.html) that seems relevant to my own life. His favorite quote, “I beseech ye in the bowels of Christ, think that ye may be mistaken.” comes from Oliver Cromwell (of all people), and I think it really ought to be inscribed over all buildings, religious and otherwise. > > (His full name is Billings Learned Hand, but Learned Hand is how he’s universally known. He had a cousin named Augustus Noble Hand, also a judge.) My other favorite judge name is the beautifully well-deserved Judge [Wisdom](http://www.medaloffreedom.com/JohnWisdom.htm). Judge John Minor Wisdom (how cool is _that_ as a full name?) was a judge of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans - the federal court with the greatest oversight over desegregation issues, as it heard appeals from the five Gulf states plus Georgia. Appointed in 1957, he remained on the bench until his death in 1999 at the age of 93. As noted in the link, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1993. ---
**Author:** ![pkbites](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pkbites/32/204_2.png) [@pkbites](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pkbites)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2005, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-some-fictional-characters-who-really-existed/305701/62 "2005-05-28T16:02:24Z")
> [@Si Amigo](#): > > I think that they narrowed Killroy and Mother Goose down to some level, but it’s a bit hazy. Food for thought. 🙂 Sure there was a Mother Goose. I’ve been to her [grave](http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=1498&pt=Elizabeth%20%27Mother%27%20Goose) But she probably didn’t write any of those tales, at least according to [THIS](http://www.geocities.com/utherworld/seasons/mothergoose.html) cite: _A popular Suburban Myth, dating to the middle of the nineteenth century, claims that many of the traditional rhymes were written by an American woman from Boston, one Elizabeth Goose, supposedly for her children or grandchildren. Her figure has appeared in wax at San Francisco’s Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Museum, while the Granary Burial Ground (in Boston, Massachusetts) gravesite of a woman named Goose (nee Foster) has become a pilgrim destination of sorts, promoted in some tourist literature. In fact, no evidence connects this woman to the Mother Goose tradition. Her alleged original book has never been found, and her Colonial American life post-dates the use of the term “Mother Goose,” as well as the earliest versions of many of the rhymes which bear her name._ ---
**Author:** ![Ranchoth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranchoth/32/1066_2.png) [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2005, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-some-fictional-characters-who-really-existed/305701/63 "2005-05-29T02:38:48Z")
Back to Robin Hood—[King (Prince) John](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_of_England) was certainly real. Speaking of Robin…whether he existed or not, he actually has [a grave](http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=4108&pt=Robin%20Hood). (But so does [Ebeneezer Scrooge.](http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=11334&pt=Ebeneezer%20Scrooge) Ditto for the Cartwrights from _Bonanza_ 😃 ) ---
**Author:** ![Ranchoth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranchoth/32/1066_2.png) [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2005, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-some-fictional-characters-who-really-existed/305701/64 "2005-05-29T02:41:08Z")
Oh! And [Casanova](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casanova) was real, too. (Don Juan wasn’t so lucky.) ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2005, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-some-fictional-characters-who-really-existed/305701/65 "2005-05-29T02:48:20Z")
Speaking of graves, [Eleanor Rigby](http://www.charlieanderson.com/images/England/EleanorRigby.jpg) has one in a church yard in Liverpool. The woman has little to do with the song (she died at 44 in 1939 and was married) but Paul liked the name. There’s also a [statue](http://www.sjsfiles.btinternet.co.uk/img0075c.jpg) of her in Liverpool (based on the song, not the real person). ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2005, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-some-fictional-characters-who-really-existed/305701/66 "2005-05-29T02:49:50Z")
Speaking of Beatles songs, there was also a real [Mr. Kite](http://www.f.kth.se/~ruus/MrKite.jpg); the song basically musicalized an 1843 circus poster John Lennon owned. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2005, 6:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-some-fictional-characters-who-really-existed/305701/67 "2005-05-29T06:38:03Z")
> [@kidchameleon](#): > > I believe the Marquis de Sade was real, as well. Except for the minor detail that he wasn’t a Marquis. He was actually a Comte (Count), but for some reason gave himself a promotion. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2005, 12:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-some-fictional-characters-who-really-existed/305701/68 "2005-05-29T12:22:11Z")
> [@Cat Jones](#): > > That’s where Flemming found the name - he wanted something boring and unremarkable but the ‘character’ wasn’t in any way based on the bird man, they were just namesakes is all. As I understand, James Bond the ornithologist was a good friend of Ian Fleming’s, and he gave 007 that name as a tribute to him. (Which, of course, makes the irony of 007 using the cover of an ornithologist when infiltrating Cuba, on the birds of which the real Bond was the recognized expert, delicious.) ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2005, 12:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-some-fictional-characters-who-really-existed/305701/69 "2005-05-29T12:32:49Z")
Semi-Hijack– Meet the Wold Newton families! > **[Answers - The Most Trusted Place for Answering Life's Questions](https://www.answers.com/redirectSearch?query=wold-newton-family)** > > Answers is the place to go to get the answers you need and to ask the questions you want Intriguging notion. ---
**Author:** ![Jake4](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/bc8723/32.png) [@Jake4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jake4)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2005, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-some-fictional-characters-who-really-existed/305701/70 "2005-05-29T16:08:31Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > Speaking of Beatles songs, there was also a real [Mr. Kite](http://www.f.kth.se/~ruus/MrKite.jpg); the song basically musicalized an 1843 circus poster John Lennon owned. Continuing to speak of Beatles songs, wasn’t Dr. Robert also a real person? Or was the name changed to protect the innocent? ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2005, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-some-fictional-characters-who-really-existed/305701/71 "2005-05-29T16:50:08Z")
> [@Polycarp](#): > > As I understand, James Bond the ornithologist was a good friend of Ian Fleming’s, and he gave 007 that name as a tribute to him. (Which, of course, makes the irony of 007 using the cover of an ornithologist when infiltrating Cuba, on the birds of which the real Bond was the recognized expert, delicious.) Fleming didn’t know the real [James Bond](http://www.ebird.org/content/news/JamesBond.html) when he gave 007 his name, he just had copy of Bond’s _Birds of the West Indies_. In fact, they met only once. When I saw Pierce Brosnan examining a copy of the book in _Die Another Die_ I burst out laughing. I got some strange looks - I think I was the only one in the theater who got the joke. ---
**Author:** ![Laughing\_Lagomorph](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/6bbea6/32.png) [@Laughing\_Lagomorph](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Laughing_Lagomorph)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2005, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-some-fictional-characters-who-really-existed/305701/72 "2005-05-29T18:31:11Z")
The final word on Robin Hood’s real life existence: [http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2\_143.html](http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_143.html) I was reminded recently that the protagonist in the fictional story _Island of the Blue Dolphins_ was actually based on a real person, a woman who was found living alone on the island of San Nicolas off the coast of California years after all the rest of her people had been removed from the island: [http://www.sbnature.org/research/anthro/chumash/lowom.htm](http://www.sbnature.org/research/anthro/chumash/lowom.htm) ---
**Author:** ![mbh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2005, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-some-fictional-characters-who-really-existed/305701/73 "2005-05-29T19:44:22Z")
> [@](#): > > There is a theory that Osiris was real (not a god, but a person of that name who was mythologized) but I’m not sure what the basis of that is. Near the Sphinx at Giza, there is a temple which the Egyptians believed contained the tomb of Osiris. I don’t know whether or not archaeologists have found a sarcophagus. If I understand correctly, the temple was close to the Nile, and is now mostly below the water table, so if there was a mummy, it probably decayed long ago. ---
**Author:** ![Crandolph](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7cd45c/32.png) [@Crandolph](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crandolph)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2005, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-some-fictional-characters-who-really-existed/305701/74 "2005-05-29T20:00:33Z")
> [@Jake4](#): > > Continuing to speak of Beatles songs, wasn’t Dr. Robert also a real person? Or was the name changed to protect the innocent? > [@](#): > > “… this classic track deals with a ‘doctor’ in the Beatles entourage whose job it is to secure pharmaceutical treasures for the Fab Four. It is strongly rumoured to be about the same West London dentist who famously introduced the group to LSD by spiking sugar lumps at a dinner party.” [Link](http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A676271) - or - > [@](#): > > The character Doctor Robert is thought to be a conflation of several people, including the Beatles’ dentist (who first supplied them with LSD) and London art dealer Robert Fraser, who was a close friend of the group and who occasionally provided the group with drugs. [Link](http://http://www.answers.com/topic/revolver-album) I suppose you could look at the Lennon _Playboy_ interview, but he seems to have misremembered or exaggerated quite a lot of verifiable info in that. ---
**Author:** ![Si\_Amigo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/si_amigo/32/2877_2.png) [@Si\_Amigo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Si_Amigo)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2005, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-some-fictional-characters-who-really-existed/305701/75 "2005-05-30T21:52:20Z")
> [@samclem](#): > > What level would that be. That they were fictional or real? Cites? Kilroy: > **[h2g2 - Kilroy Was Here - Edited Entry](https://h2g2.com/edited_entry/A508277)** > > Kilroy Was Here, from the edited h2g2, the Unconventional Guide to Life, the Universe and Everything From the link: ``` James J Kilroy was a ship inspector at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts, USA. It was his responsibility to check on how many holes a riveter had filled in a shift on any given day. In order to prevent double counting by dishonest riveters and to prove to his supervisors that he'd been doing his work, he began marking 'Kilroy was here' inside the hulls of the ships being built. He used yellow crayon so it would be easily visible; this way the off-shift inspectors wouldn't count the rivets more than once and pay the riveter for work he hadn't done. ``` Mother Goose was covered in anthor post. Sorry I’m so late to reply, just got back from the weekend. 😃 So what I was saying was that they did exist in some form, but that they were not the people that the fictional stories desribe either. ---
**Author:** ![psiekier](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psiekier/32/116_2.png) [@psiekier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psiekier)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2005, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-some-fictional-characters-who-really-existed/305701/76 "2005-05-31T17:44:03Z")
In _The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy_, Douglas Adams recounts the appalling poetry of both the Vogons (third worst in the universe) and the Azgoths of Kria (second worst in the universe); he then goes on to mention that the most awful poetry in the universe perished along with its creator, Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Greenbridge, Essex, England, when the Earth was demolished to make way for a new interstellar bypass. This is mildly amusing to most readers. In the original radio show, however, Adams declared the worst poetry in the universe to be the product of **Paul Neil Milne Johnstone** - a real poet – and later changed both the name and gender of the author to the imaginary character. Whether this was at the request of Johnstone or Adams’s own publisher is unclear, but Johnstone was certainly a real person. … and while it refers to a number and not an “imaginary person,” I’ve heard that the numerical odds of being picked up by a passing spacecraft after being ejected from another one before you asphyxiate do, in fact (or at least, did), correspond to the phone number of an Islington flat. In the _Hitchhiker’s Guide_, this is where Arthur met Trillian and Zaphod (who, at the time, had only the two arms and the one head, and called himself “Phil”), but In Real Life was supposedly the home of some of friends of the author. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2005, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-some-fictional-characters-who-really-existed/305701/77 "2005-05-31T17:50:01Z")
Speaking of Douglas Adams, Samuel Taylor Coleridge was a real person and, unbelievable as it is, “Xanadu” is a real poem and not a joke invented by Adams. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2005, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-some-fictional-characters-who-really-existed/305701/78 "2005-05-31T18:20:28Z")
> [@acsenray](#): > > Speaking of Douglas Adams, Samuel Taylor Coleridge was a real person and, unbelievable as it is, “Xanadu” is a real poem and not a joke invented by Adams. Cite? :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2005, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-some-fictional-characters-who-really-existed/305701/79 "2005-05-31T19:17:02Z")
:smack: Ya know, when one makes a joke, it helps to get the details right. “Kubla Khan” is the title, not “Xanadu.” ---
**Author:** ![lizardling](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f4b2a3/32.png) [@lizardling](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lizardling)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2005, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-some-fictional-characters-who-really-existed/305701/80 "2005-05-31T19:39:33Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > Davy Crockett served in Congress… so for that period of his life, at least, there is ample documention in the public record of his existance. Not to mention all the Alamo-related content. Plaques and everything. [QUOTE=ascenray] Speaking of Douglas Adams, Samuel Taylor Coleridge was a real person and, unbelievable as it is, “Xanadu” is a real poem and not a joke invented by Adams. [QUOTE] Is this a whoosh? :dubious: [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-some-fictional-characters-who-really-existed/305701.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-are-some-fictional-characters-who-really-existed/305701.md?page=5)