Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Dispatch 16: Lenin, Tellesavalis, Ventura





Lenin [leh-nin] (Russian nonsensical, of unknown origin)


1) Singer and songwriter for The Beatles, a reasonably successful if shortlived garage band out of Liverpool.


2) The founder of an ill-fated country known as the idiot stepsister of the West, dedicated during its seven-decade existence to equal opportunity poverty and misery.


3) a 20th century deity, revered by multitudes alongside Albanian and Korean dictators Hoxha and Kim and college heartthrobs Castro and Guevara.  


Tellesavalis [telee-savalis] (Greek)


1) A form of extra sensory perception closely related to telekinesis.


2) Large skulled bald cowboy who often enjoyed exposing his flaccid torso in popular periodicials.


3) Brother of Stavros, ally of Crocker.


4) Form of alopecia Areata.




Ventura [ven-tyooruh] (Californio-Minnesotan)



1) A former wrestler, Minnesota governor and best-selling conspiracy theorist.


2) A semi animated successful pet detective.


3) An American-made car named after San Buenaventura.



Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Dispatch 15: Apple, Lemon and Blackberry


Apple [a-pl] (Anglo-saxon)



1) 'Enticer': ever since the days of Eve herself, dangling her apple in the face of the hapless and drooling Adam, it is a well-established fact that women have always sought ways of luring men into their feminine lair where so many latter day Adams find themselves shackled forever.

2) 'Computer': the vaunted image of the post gender Amazonian female, all knowing and stylish; once boxy and white, then voluptuous and colorful, now thin and flat. When turned on, apples may perform vigorously in the open vertical position but are asleep when turn off in horizontal orientation.

3) A 21st century French anagram for 'Le(s) App'.

4) When combined with 'bottoms', a brand of jeans.

Lemon [le-min] (Anglo-French)


1) Often known as a 'nut', a hypersqueezed testicle of a type openly sported by lead singers of 1970's so-called supergroups.

2) A consumer item such as an automobile that fails to perform as expected.

3) Dweller at or near the Lemon (elm) River, in Devonshire.

4) Beloved man, sweetheart.

Blackberry [blak-beree] (Middle English)


1) A tree preferred by silkworms; the tree's leaves represent the entirety of this worm's diet.


2) A seemingly inncouous handheld electronic device with the devious power to transform an average, reasonably polite and interactive human into a rude, narcissistic and inattentive zhlub.


3) A dark little fruit especially preferred by overweight queens visiting Thailand.

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Dispatch 14: Ileus, Female, Tristan



Ileus [ill-ee-uhs] (Latin)


1) Intestinal blockage leading to severe colicky pain and vomiting.

2) A French-inflected name preferred by American neo-isolationists across the political spectrum, meaning "USA shall be an island".


3) The mysterious patron saint of Gastroenterologists, known for the magically transparent flesh and skin over his abdomen, exposing his kishkehs for eternity.

Femalé [feh-MAH-lee] (Latin)

1) The collective consciousness of all womanhood, underscored by sounding the final 'e', as in the "The grand femalé".

2) 'Fe' is the periodic table symbol for the metal iron, thus implying the iron will of women and their stronger lifelong resilience as compared to males and their shorter lifespans. 

3) Much like iron changing color as it rusts, women often dye their hair or embark on plastic physique manipulation regimens as they age.


Tristan [Trist-in] (Old Celtic)

1) Derived fron Pictish word meaning "riot" or "tumult".

2) One who exhibits ever-bronzed skin due to years of frequenting hotel swimming pools at tropical resorts for the express purpose of initiating romantic affairs with unsuspecting guests, usually rich and bored wives.

3) From the Latin 'Tristis', meaning 'sad'.

4) In tragic Celtic legend, Tristan is sent to Ireland to fetch Isolde, the future bride of King Mark of Cornwall. Instead, Tristan and Isolde fall in ill-fated love.

Monday, February 22, 2010

Dispatch 13: Timberland, Neo and Ikea





Timberland [tim-ber-land] (Anglo-American)


1) Rugged boots designed for lumberjacks yet ubiquitously worn by blank faced teenage suburban mall loiterers and indolent inner city youth; preferably shoelace-free.


2) Evocative of the gritty urban wilderness, said to promote so-called Jungle Fever and to have retroactively inspired the 1980s trans-genre rap lyrics "It's like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wundah how I keep from goin' undah".


3) A town in sequoia-thick western Washington State.



Neo [nee-oh] (Latin)


1) new, like a freshly hatched suckling; expressing hope that the child have the talent of embracing any trend however fleeting.  


2) NASA's Near-Earth Object program designed to detect meteors headed for Earth.


3) Lead character in the Matrix Trilogy, born Thomas A. Anderson on March 11, 1962 in Lower Downtown, Capital City, USA.


Ikea [eye-kee-uh] (Scandinavian vulgate)


1) Female variant of President Dwight (Ike) Eisenhower (1952-60) or performer Ike Turner, ex-husband of Tina.


2) A large box store offering stylish if shoddy furniture with an exceptionally short life expectancy.


3) "I kea", syntactical abbreviation of "I am Kea", as in "You Tarzan, me Jane". or "I am Sam"; meaning "I am a large green New Zealand parrot feeding on garbage, carcasses and live animals" (see earlier dispatch for 'kea').

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Dispatch 12: La - a, Madison and Led Zeppelin


La - a [la-dash-uh] (American vulgate)


1) Extremely swift, one able to dash faster than the word itself is conveyed.


2) A laddish female, i.e. one acting like a lad, or tomboy. 


3) A female beyond the modern, able to transcend and even negate conventional notions of language by conveying concepts through symbols rather than letters (dashing, for example would imply acceleration, or a plus sign, while in this case, dash is represented by a minus symbol).


4) Dasha is the name of a Playboy model; when prefixed with 'la', the model's Slavic identity is instantly Franco-Iberianized. 


Madison [ma-dih-sun] (Middle English)


1) 'Son of Maude' -- fourth most popular baby girl's name in USA.  Maude was a waitress in an eponymous sitcom of the 1970s; though Maude did have a foster child in a 1978 episode, there is no evidence at present that she bore a biological son.


2) A Manhattan avenue and small side street, a 19th century president and many place names across the USA.


3) Star mermaid in the 1984 film 'Splash' which proved for many millions of moviegoers the existence of mermaids.


Var: Maddison, Madisyn, Madyson


Led Zeppelin [led-zep-elin] (Anglo-saxon)


1) Lead dirigible modeled on the escaped giant breast devouring the countryside in Woody Allen's film 'Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask'.


2) Air ship named after German general, aeronaut and inventor Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin.


3) Modestly successful long-hair British rock group unceremoniously disbanded in 1978; the name was coined by a drummer in a rival band who choked on his own vomitus that very year.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Dispatch # 6: Chandler, Latreen, Arnav

Chandler [chand-ler, chahnd-] (Old French)

1) A maker or seller items made of tallow or wax, such as candles or soap; another example of the proclivity of certain American castes to name babies after ill-fated and long forgotten professions.

2) A seller of a variety of provisions.

3) From the French 'chandelier' -- defined in English as a decorative light fixture suspended from the ceiling.

4) Has inspired the following Yiddish quip hurled by Medieval French Jews on their Crusader tormentors:
"may you live like a chandelier, hanging by day and burning by night."

Note: 457th most popular name in the US in 2008.





Latreen [La-treen}(Latin Vulgate)

1) Also found in its traditional spelling of
Latrine (from Latin lavatrina meaning bath and the Old French Latrines).

2) A communal toilet often used in temporary camps, barracks, construction sites and very frequently in the third world.
3) Meaning 'one who prefers Spanish treenware' (treenware are wooden dishes and utensils)





Arnav [Ar-nahv] (Hebrew, Sanskrit/Hindi, Catalan, Franco-German)

1) Common field hare (Heb).

2) Body of water (Sanskrit/Hindi).

3) Catalan variant of
Arnau, an abbreviation of Arnaud, which is the French form of the German Arnold, defined in classic Schwarzeneggerian imagery as 'eagle strength'.

4) A prime case of transnational migrational etymological mammalian evolution (TMEME), in this instant merging Indo-European and Levantine symbologies.

5) Recalls the legendary saying: "You can lead a Semitic hare to drink from the River Ganges but you shan't prevent it from morphing into a Teutonic predator."

Note: 974th most popular male baby name in the US.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Dispatch 11: Merkin, Lazania, Denim


Merkin [Mer-kin] (Latin Vulgate)


1) A pubic wig for women; associated with 16th century prostitutes, was designed to conceal a pubus denuded to exterminate body lice and/or evidence of venereal disease.

2) A New York-based private equity fund investor boasting a highly unorthodox strategy of buying the very top and selling at absolute bottom.

3) A New York Times writer related to the aforementioned Merkin.

4) Lower class woman.

5) Mop.


Lazania [La-za-nia] (Latin)


1) A 'variant' spelling of 'Lasagna': a dish made from layers of wide pasta strips and filled with cheese, meat and or vegetables.


2) Possibly derived from Latin 'cooking pot'.


3) A completely obscure prewar Italian colony wedged somewhere between the African lands of Tanzania and Azania (the Apartheid-era name for South Africa preferred by black nationalists).

4) A beach in both Cyprus and Spain.

5) As 'Lasania', a chain of restaurants in Pakistan whose proud slogan is 'serving with a difference.'  Free home delivery is only available in Karachi at this time.


Denim [de-nuhm] (French)


1) The title character in a controversial mid 20th century television show 'Denim the Mennonite'.


2) A heavy cotton fabric, or trousers made from such a fabric.

3) 'Of Nimes', an abbreviation of 'Serge de Nimes', or 'Serge of Nimes'; serge was a heavy fabric made in the French town of Nimes [neem] in the 17th Century. Contemporary use of the term began in the USA in the mid 19th Century.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Dispatch 10: Today's featured names are Nympha, Xerox and Skyy


Nympha [nim-fah] (Latin)


1) Also known as Labia Minora; this is the mythological younger sister of Lahbia, daughter of Queen Vagine and the fourth cousin of Venus.

2) Oracle of the Vulvan Labia.


3) One of any of the many minor Greco-Roman deities residing in such natural phenomena as water, trees, mountains or sewer drains.


4) The larval state of some insects.


5) Beautiful and/or promiscuous girl.


6) Long forgotten saint, affiliated for unknown if suspected reasons with Tryphon, patron saint of gardeners.

Xerox [zee-rocks] (Ameringlish)


1) Lost brother of Xena the Warrior Princess.


2) An act of promiscuous and flagrant xerography.


3) Generally a name given to someone closely resembling an older sibling.




Skyy [sky] (Faux Erse)

1) The act of intoxicating a friend with alterior motives in mind (verb).

2) A brand of vodka perceived by the hoi polloi as high-end.

3) The presumed original spelling of the British Isle of Skye, as preserved in the inner sanctums of trailer parks and inner cities.


4) A little-known funk band of the late 1970s.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Dispatch 9: Kia, Chevy, Celica and Tucker



Kia [kee-ah] (Nonsensical faux-Latin) (Maori)

1) When suffixed by an exclamation mark, a primal scream let out in unison by a scrimage line of mad karate kickers.






2) A soldier killed in action (K.I.A.)

3) A South Korean sedan long seen as inferior to its Japanese rivals; with the 2010 troubles of
Toyota Motor Corp, this name is sure to increase in popularity among prospective parents.

4) Homonymic variant of 'Kea', a large green parrot native to the New Zealand uplands; eats insects, garbage, carrion, and even live animals (gnaws at sheep) and birds (rips little hatchlings out of nests) .

Chevy [sheh-vee] (Scottish)

1) To harrass, hurry and nag someone.



2) To harrass, hurry and nag someone to get the damn car to the auto repair shop.


3) A hunting cry.


4) Homonymic variant of a type of French goat cheese.


5) An affectionate diminutive of a certain automobile which has caused great angst to three generations of drivers since the Carter administration.




Celica  [seh-lick-ah] (Faux-Latin)


1) A seemingly healthy and sensible female who eventually proves herself to be unable to stop at anything.


2) Its homonymic variant 'Silica' is itself a Latin variant of 'Sandy', defined in certain ethnic enclaves as a female experiencing and exhibiting extreme promiscuity.






Tucker  [tuh-ker] (Anglo)


1) A person or thing that tucks or folds in.


2) Piece of linen or lace on a woman's bodice.


3) To be exhausted.


4) Anthroponymist David Palmquist reports that this is Australian slang for food, which may be substituted with vegemite, which itself means "a very strong turnip."


5) Preston Tucker's eponymously named sedan of which only 51 were made in 1948. The shortlived car maker was rumored to have been brought down by the so-called US Big Three  automakers.


Thursday, February 4, 2010

Dispatch #8: Rexall, Jailene, Abcd


Rexall [reks-all] (Latin-Canadian)



1) Ruler of all the world.

2) Canada's answer to CVS, Rite Aid and Duane Reade.
3) A hockey arena in Edmonton, Alberta
4) Anagramian pun: 'rellax', suggesting 'soother of bowels'.
5) Well known homonymists suggest an ironic alternate etymology derived from Yiddish of 'shlemazl' meaning 'wrecks all'.

Jailene [jay-leen] (Latino hybrid)


1) 'Our Lady of Captivity' -- patron saint of Sing Sing and San Quentin.
2) 'Jailin' for males -- active stance etymology, as follows: "As a corrections officer (s)he is jailin convicts".

3) Jailin passive reversal form would suggest a meaning as illustrated: "The drek was thrown in jail."

Var: Jayleen, Jaeline, Jaylin, Jaelin.

contributed by anthroponymist Perele von Shifer
Abcd [ab-sid] (North American)



1) Implying that life is akin to a classroom, and with a world-full of wonder, one must always be learning.
2) Possessing powerful stomach muscles.
3) A lyrical tribute to the departed Michael Jackson.
4) A North American AC/DC tribute band.
Var: Abcde (Ab-side)




QQNUUTZ9862V

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Dispatch # 7: Kennedy, Malia, Haggis


Kennedy [ken-i-dee] (Irish)


1) An iconic American family dynasty of the past century consisting of a phillandering cast of ill-fated tycoons, senators, a president and their square-jawed women.

2) Derived from the Old Irish cinneide, meaning 'ugly head.'

3) Novelist who attempted to glorify his hometown of Albany NY, in vain.

4) A creaky international airport along the windy shores of Jamaica Bay; once named Idlewild.


Malia [ma-LEE-ah] (Hawaiian) (Franco-Hebrew)

1) Hawaiian for 'perhaps'.


2) Eldest daughter of Hawaii-born Barack Obama, the 44th President of the USA; since her father's election, advisors have strongly suggested changing her name from 'Perhaps' to 'Definitely'. Others within the administration have proposed 'Probably' as a compromise.

3) The southern half of Somalia, a country whose apt name amalgamates the words 'so' and 'maybe', as in "So maybe it's a country, and maybe it's not".

4) French for 'badness'. Somalia could also be understood as 'The Land of So-Bad'.

5) Franco-Hebrew for 'God's badness'.


Haggis [hag-is] (Middle English)


1) A round Scottish sausage filled with the chopped and minced heart, lungs and liver of sheep mixed with beef or mutton suet, and seasoned with spices and pepper. The concoction is stuffed into a sheep's stomach and boiled; usually served with turnips and mashed potatoes and imbibed with Scotch whisky.

2) Could originate in Old French 'agace', meaning 'magpie', implying the odds and ends the bird collects. (Online Etymology Dictionary).

3) A Canadian leftwing Oscar-winning movie director.

4) An Anglo-Saxon etymololgical amalgam of 'hag' and 'is' which would mean "an ugly, vicious, old witch".


Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Dispatch #5: Today's special names are Ballsach, ESPN and Brandon



Ballsach [bawl-zak] (Franco-German)

1) Saxon variant of Balzac, the 19th Century French author and a founder of the realist school of fiction.

2) Anthroponymist Andrea Todd detects a strong testo-phallocentric impulse, underscored by the centrality of women in Balzacian literature and the 12,000 letters the author received from admiring ladies.

3) A responsive if nervous pouch, known to swell when content but defensively contract, retract and wrinkle in alarm upon sudden exposure to chilly weather, cold water or intimidating males.

ESPN [Ess - pn] (American English)

1) One capable of either mindreading or seeing future events. May be used as a verb, i.e. "That fortune teller is really good at ESPn' "

2) A keen aficionado of two dimensional athletic zhlobbery projected onto a flat screen.

3) A person of Spanish or Hispanic extraction.

Brandon [brændən] (Old English)

1) Broom Hill -- Maybe after a small, old eponymous English town. Or maybe it really is just a hill of brooms -- England was, after all, a strange place populated by odd people during the first millenium.

2) Reflecting the recent trend of naming children after consumer products, pioneering parents may choose Brandon as a clever catchall name for all brands: 'brand' and 'don' combine to mean 'Master of ALL Brands'.

3) Perhaps a variant of Breanden, yet another legendary explorer claimed -- this time by the Irish -- to have preceded the 8th century Viking landing in America by two centuries, never mind Colombus.

Monday, January 25, 2010

Dispatch # 4 -- today's special names: Cale, Areola, Jade





Cale [Kay -l] (Middle English)
1) A cabbage like vegetable with wrinkled leaves; derived from 'cole' as in cole slaw.

2) In honor of Cale Yarborough - famous NASCAR driver. (though in this case, Cale is short for Caleb)

3) Commemorating John Cale - Welsh songwriter and drugged out founder of the Velvet Underground.

4) Abbreviation of Mikhail (Mi-keyl), as in Gorbachev, the last Soviet emperor famous for the Russia-shaped red raspberry he patriotically sported upon his bald head.

Variants: Kale, Caile, Cayle, Kale, Kail(e), Kayle, kael

Areola [uh-ree-uh-luh] (Latin)


1) Diminutive for 'open space', this is the circular or oval area of pigmented skin surrounding the human nipple.

2) The focal point of the known male heterosexual mental universe.

3) The gratefully responsive stepsister of Ariel, the admired mermaid.

4) Patron saint of Colostrum.

5) A sombrero.

Jade [jeyd] (Middle English)


1) A broken down or useless horse.

2) Supposedly-prized green mineral often used in low-budget jewelry; popular gift purchase at duty-free shops for frugal husbands and boyfriends requiring something, anything, to bring back from their trips to Vegas to their irritated wives and girlfriends.

3) A disreputable or ill tempered woman or girl.

4) A nag.

5) To become spiritless and/or cynical.

Variant: Jaden, Jaiden, Jayden.

Friday, January 22, 2010

Dispatch # 3: Brayden, Phillopia, Buick, Isabelle


Brayden [Bray-den] (Gaelic)

1) Salmon -- the fish.


2) Traditional Irish hallah bread.


3) 'He who brays indoors' -- boasting ass-like vocal chords.

 Variants: Braydon, Braeden, Braedon, Bradyn, Braiden


Phillopia [fäl-'lop-ya] (Italic)

1) A land populated by women noted for their extreme accessibility and rampant fertility; located near the legendary kingdoms of Amazonia and Atlantis.

2) Variant of Fallopia, the character played by model Irina Voronina on Saul of the Molemen, a live action series on the cable network Adult Swim; mistaking the land of her birth for Fallopia rather than her native Russia, Voronina was reportedly propositioned off camera by the curious stars of the series Entourage during her appearance on the show.

3) After one of two Phillips: husband of Queen Elizabeth II or the Macedonian ruler of antiquity and father of Alexander the Great.


4) Recalling Fallopius, the discoverer of the tubes that connect the ovary to the uterus - the path traveled by an egg to reach a sperm released from the male.

Of interest, a highly instructive if humorous riddle has emerged in the US Northeast:
Q: What's the subway system in Fallopia?
A: The Fallopian tubes.
 Variants: Philopia, Fallopia, Filopia, Phalopia

Buick [Byoo-ik] (English)

1) In honor of David Dunbar Buick, founder of the Buick Motor Company.
2) Vomitus, or the act of regurgitation, as in the following illustrative example: "I buicked in the backseat of Uncle Harry's Ford Escort".


3) Originally a surname derived from the one of two small English villages of Buick (alt. Bewick).

4) Mythical brother of Fallopian princess Pontiaca.

Isabelle [iz-uh-bel] (Hebrew)


1) Assumed to be of Italian origin, meaning 'She so byudeeful'.

2) Mystifyingly translated in some sources as 'God's promise', Isabel was the despised Phoenician wife of King Ahab who reigned over the northen kingdom of Israel in the 9th century BCE. Pronounced 'Ee-zevel', its Hebrew meaning is 'pile of garbage'.


3) Given the name's etymology, it is a happy irony that the queen who reigned during the persecutions and expulsions of the Spanish Inquisition was named Isabella.


Variants: Isabella, Isabel, Ysabela etc.





Thursday, January 21, 2010

Dispatch # 2: Hayden, Aquanetta, Porter, Larva, Placenta


Hayden  [hād'n] (Germanic).


1) From Medieval German meaning 'godless heathen'.


2) An etymological  word compound

('hay' and 'den') meaning 'cow feed

storage barn'.


3) Planetarium near Central Park

crowded on weekends by throngs of hyper-educated

parents and their always brilliant children.  



Alternate spellings: Haiden, Hydn



Aquanetta [ˈækwəˌnetta] (Latin Vulgate)


1) She who displays an uncanny

ability to maintain her hair in a

rigid, glacier-like state under all

environmental conditions.


2) Evokes the solitary romance of deep sea fishing, while slyly addressing the ironic reality of a male dominated fishing industry amid an undulating sea and its mythological femininity.  


Porter [ˈpɔrtər] (Middle English)


1) Janitor.


2) An attendant working in rail cars, usually equipped with nifty hats and white gloves.


3) A dark beer first brewed in the 17th Century originally prepared specifically for porters.





Larva [laarv] (Latin)




1) Freshly hatched, wingless, often wormlike form of many insects before metamorphosis.

2) Deep symbol of fertility; representing the theological expression of the biblical injunction to furiously and incessantly copulate. 
3) Latin Origin: ghost, specter, devil, mask, skeleton.

Placenta [plsent] (Greek)


1) A flattened circular organ in the uterus of a pregnant mammal, nourishing and maintaining the fetus through the umbilical cord (OxDic); better known as the rather messy detritus of afterbirth. 

2) A profound expression of Mother Earth nurturing all creatures in its messy and sloppy primordial midst.

3) Likewise, an etymological compound ('place' and 'centah'), or central place for fetii.


4) Originally a Greek flat, round cake, implying an inherent sweetness and roundness recalling the circularity of all life.