Dug! Rows! You two get in here!

Some proper and common noun pairs are homophones/heterographs (sound alike; written differently). When the proper noun is a person's given name, we're generally oblivious to the common noun meaning. If you haven't nodded off yet, see what I mean:

Carin' and Sharin' sure
make a cute lesbian couple!

Here's Carolin' now.

Her husband and parents

  are a-carolin', too.

Do you know women named Carin' and Sharin'? Such sweet names. . . . 

How about Carolin'? As in:  Deck the Halls. 

Well, what did they expect  
when they named her Blare?

Less festive but no less illustrative:  Blare and Die. Yes, it appears that even when choosing the baby's name parents don't always pick up on this. There are parents who would heedlessly call their little girl Die.

Princess . . . . 

 [Brief editorial: How many times 
had she asked, Please retreat?
And these were people she'd known

for years, that hunted her down.]  

    

For guy names, let's start with Pall. 

Quite diminished.

Need I say more? 
<--- 

   And how about poor Wane?  
                                      --->

Additional examples: 
Less, Kneel, and of course the twins, Decks and Wrecks. 

"Less is More."(There's Less now, on the left.)

Decks and Wrecks after an afternoon at 
McDonald's Playhouse.  Sadly, they are banned 
for a length of time still to be determined.

Hey, Kneel! How's 

it goin', buddy?

 






Final note (if you're still with me):  I thought of a name, really a nickname, that cues most English speakers to pick up on both meanings. Except for some astonishingly clueless parents . . . who could have gone with Rich. Or Rick.

I would rather drown as put "What's in a Name?" up here in the title field.

I chose Asa as my son's given name. I considered a lot of names, maybe, oh, 8-10 thousand-- and everyone seems really happy with that one, as does Asa. 

Since then, I've thought off and on about how there are names we give our children that, well, they just aren't much to live up to. You have to look at common names afresh to see what I'm talking about. Take Matt. As in... Wipe your shoes on that mat. See what I mean?

How about Mark? Who made this mark here? Get in here and clean it up right now!

It happens with girls' names. Dot. Pat. Here's one -- Midge. Now that's almost too obvious. Surely a parent would think better of that along the way.

What about Ali? Sheesh, we can only hope the Katz family sees the folly in that.

And imagine you name your kid Guy. If you're French and into Karate, sure, you could say it was the name of your Karate bathrobe thing. But if it's plain old American Guy, it's like you're offering up to the world the bare minimum. Who's your son? Oh, just some guy.

One I really snicker about is Nat. I know Nat's parents didn't think about it. If I were Nat, I'd start spelling it Gnat in college. And then I would use this for my avatar:

Fungus Gnat - Adult

There are a few names that should have fallen out of circulation naturally: Fanny. Now come on. John, Dick, Peter. These need no further explication.
 

There are so many more -- I know because I once made a big long list of Names That Aren't Much to Live Up To when I was particularly bored.

Right now, I'm not that bored. And you'll run across more. You'll think of it when you meet someone named, say, Tad.