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    Have we done nominative determinism?

    ...Or whatever it's called?

    Only I've just watched 'X-Men: Days Of Future Past' and, quite by chance, in the closing credits I noticed that the chef for the shoot was one 'Luc Champagne'. Ha!

    Can anyone beat that?

    #2
    Have we done nominative determinism?

    Did you not spot that the screenplay was written by Frank Lee Rubbish?

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      #3
      Have we done nominative determinism?

      and why are X-Men films taking their names from Moody Blues records?

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        #4
        Have we done nominative determinism?

        Speaking of records of that era, I thought I'd heard a startling example of nominative amusement on BBC Radio 2's Sounds of the '60s this morning, when The Pyramids' surf instrumental 'Midnight Run' was played. The presenter noted that it had been written by Dick Burns and preceded their hit 'Penetration'. Sadly however further research reveals that he doesn't seem to have been a member of the group so presumably had nothing to do with the latter, though one supposes the former was about his urgent need to get to the bathroom.

        On the other hand, going back to X-Men, director Bryan Singer isn't one.

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          #5
          Have we done nominative determinism?

          I can't recall any other examples I've personally spotted lately, but I do think that for outstanding nominative determinism Judge Igor Judge takes some beating. He was Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales until last year, and since he was made Baron Judge of Draycote at the same time as assuming that position, it means that even since retiring from being the Lord Chief Justice he's still The Lord Judge.

          I don't know if it's strictly determinative or just awesome, but Lt. Gen. Sir Manley Power led a brigade in the Peninsular War under the Duke of Wellington. Try reading his Wiki entry without chuckling whenever his name comes up.

          Of course, there's always the fastest man on earth, Usain Bolt.

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            #6
            Have we done nominative determinism?

            My dentist was a Dr Payne.

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              #7
              Have we done nominative determinism?

              Yikes. Now there's a moniker to chill the blood.

              In high school I had an unmarried middle-aged RE teacher whose first name turned out to be Virginia, which provoked a lot of mirth among certain sections of my class.

              It occurs to me that Arsene Wenger managing Arsenal for all these years is almost too good to be true, isn't it? Even neater than Samantha Bond being in four Bond films as Moneypenny.

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                #8
                Have we done nominative determinism?

                Thinking further, one area always ripe for this sort of thing was BBC Radio 4's Gardeners' Question Time — regular panellists while I was growing up (and in some cases to the present) include(d) Adrian Bloom, scion of a family of Norfolk nurserymen, Bob Flowerdew (also a Norfolk man) and Pippa Greenwood.
                I think a side-effect of the phenomenon was that I thought for years that another panellist, garden designer and broadcaster Chris Beardshaw, had a beard — apparently erroneously, it turns out. At this point, of course, we're shifting into the area of nominative contra-determinism, as personified by ZZ Top's famously non-hirsute Frank Beard.

                The latter syndrome also starts to drift towards what I tend to imagine as a parlour game called Wrong Happy Families. This has stuck in my head ever since nine or ten years ago when there was some rather poor construction work done on the house I was renting by Mr Bun the builder.

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                  #9
                  Have we done nominative determinism?

                  Velvet Android wrote:

                  It occurs to me that Arsene Wenger managing Arsenal for all these years is almost too good to be true, isn't it?
                  Don't forget Wolfgang Wolf, who used to manage Wolfsburg.

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                    #10
                    Have we done nominative determinism?

                    There was a guy on the global address list at a company I worked at whose name was Sunil Wankhede. (Pronounced wank-a-day.)
                    I don't know if he did, mind.

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                      #11
                      Have we done nominative determinism?

                      Rogin the Armchair Fan wrote: Velvet Android wrote:

                      It occurs to me that Arsene Wenger managing Arsenal for all these years is almost too good to be true, isn't it?
                      Don't forget Wolfgang Wolf, who used to manage Wolfsburg.
                      See also John de Wolf playing for Wolves.

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                        #12
                        Have we done nominative determinism?

                        Usain Bolt

                        I always liked that the last name of the couple who brought a suit against the state of Virginia which led to the Supreme Court striking down the ban on interracial marriage was Loving.

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                          #13
                          Have we done nominative determinism?

                          My dentist is called Doktor Frank. He's pretty straight-talking.

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                            #14
                            Have we done nominative determinism?

                            http://www.anorak.co.uk/410980/strange-but-true/nominative-determinism-mr-phuc-kieu-arrested-for-sex-crimes.html/

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                              #15
                              Have we done nominative determinism?

                              I lived in Germany briefly as a student and considered a career in stand up comedy (my real surname translates as "Myself, funny ha-ha).

                              Any dealings with officialdom (passport control, hotel check-in etc.) remain problematic. "Ja, but your REAL name?"

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                                #16
                                So, I was going to put this in "similar words that can cause problems", but I found a more suitable thread. And I'm sure this must have been commented on hundreds of times before... And this really comes down to "Isn't SB incredibly ignorant", but here goes.

                                I don't really read any of the Ireland threads, because I basically don't understand 90% of what's going on. But I occasionally accidentally click on one, or the Ireland stuff comes into a thread like the Brexit one. And occasionally, I see the term "Brokenshire". Well, for the last year or so, I just assumed that it was another one of Duncan Gardner's joke phrases for Northern Ireland, and particularly it's dysfunctional regional assembly. Because, well, it's a thoroughly apposite term.

                                Imagine my surprise when I discovered that there is an actual person called Brokenshire, and he's secretary of state for Northern Ireland. Surely as good an example of nominative determinism as you could find.

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                                  #17
                                  Oh, very good, yes. I have thought this for a while about him but forgot to mention it on here as was always in the car when i heard his name.

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                                    #18
                                    The organist at the Midnight Mass service that the BBC televised this year was called David Pipe.

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                                      #19
                                      Originally posted by Southport Zeb View Post
                                      David Pipe.
                                      I take it not the Welsh one-cap wonder?

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                                        #20
                                        I always thought Cardinal Sin was too good to be true.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaime_Sin

                                        "His title and surname as Cardinal Sin (another term for a deadly sin) were a point of humour in the Philippines and for Filipino Catholics. Examples included "The greatest sin of all: Cardinal Sin," and even his own pun of "Welcome to the house of Sin" that he used to greet guests at Villa San Miguel, the Archbishop's palace in Mandaluyong."

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                                          #21
                                          It's not nominative determinism, but in the vein of great judge names a la Justice Judge above and Justice Laws, it turns out there's now a Sir Launcelot on the Court of Appeal.

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                                            #22
                                            In football, few will emulate Xavi Julią Andorrą, who played both for FC Andorra and the Andorra national team.

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                                              #23
                                              Given his skin colour I always felt Phil Brown was trying to live up to his name.

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                                                #24
                                                Mike England is the antithesis of this thread. But Ken Scotland is not.

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                                                  #25
                                                  Determinism or merely appropriateness?

                                                  Guardian article on discovery of new planet in process of formation quotes Miriam Keppler of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany (yeh yeh spelling, whatever).

                                                  It's also not as far away as you might think: "the planet – a gas giant with a mass greater than Jupiter – is about as far from its star as Uranus is from our sun".

                                                  Never tires.

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