Gosh folks, sometimes I need a break from all the very serious stuff I write about, so on a lighter note let’s have a little fun with some true-life trivia…

Apparently, we try to live up to our names. Women named Laura become lawyers, and men named Dennis become dentists. I noticed a family on the TV show Wife Swap, were a very dirty and messy family. Their last name was Grimes. Meet Ron Rumble who is an acoustic and vibrational engineer, and Marc Breedlove  who conducted experiments to get female rats to display mounting behavior. Then there’s the funeral company in Texas called Boxwell Brothers, and did I mention one of the UK’s top brain doctors is Lord Brain! All real people!

A study about nitrates in groundwater is authored by someone named Laurie Drinkwater, and a book about Polar regions is authored by Daniel Snowman. Just yesterday I noticed a dowsing book by none other than Henry Dowser, which certainly supports the theory that authors gravitate to the area of research which fits their name.

Now, didn’t I read in the news about William Hurt, hurting his girlfriend?  And what about Bernie Madoff- he sure made off with a bundle.

In Asia, too, names are often linked to destiny. For decades, it has been common in Chinese society to name a female first-born baby “Brotherwanter”, to show fate that the female child’s main job was to prepare the way for a male child. I also read about a girl in America named Tiny Bimbo, and  a boy named Felon. Is the girl going to grow up to be a bimbo, and is the boy to become a felon?

As interesting, or maybe even more interesting is that 2 psychologists noticed that a nontrivial proportion of married couples (out of 42,000 studied) had alliterative names. Allison was most likely to hook up with Andrew and Carrie with Chris. And I have a nephew named Brian, who married Beth!