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Proper Verbs

 Name children after verbs
  (+11, -3)
(+11, -3) 		  [vote for,
against]

I have noticed a convention seemingly peculiar to Americans: naming their kids after verbs.
e.g. Flip, Chuck, Rip, Bob, Skip etc.

I think we need more of them and more complex words. In fact, make it fun by throwing in polysyllabic transitive verbs as well.
Cycle, Stroll, Troll, Regurgitate, Bundle, Perambulating, Annotate...

The world needs to be a more interesting place.

—UnaBubba, Oct 12 2001

(?) Overgeneralisation http://tuxedo.org/j...generalization.html
From the Hacker's Dictionary: more fiddling around with nouns, verbs, adjectives and so on. «English as a whole is already heading in this direction ... hackers are simply a bit ahead of the curve.» It looks like the ½b is further ahead still. [cp, Oct 12 2001, last modified Oct 21 2004]


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Annotation:







       Mark, Rob, Nick, Pat... Stu are all boys' names.
—lubbit, Oct 12 2001
   

       Boys' names can also be reused as verbs: "I'm just going to derek the sink - it's blocked!".
—hippo, Oct 12 2001
   

       You're missing the point a little, though hippo's on to it. I'm thinking *weird*.
—UnaBubba, Oct 12 2001
   

       hippo, is that a Bizarre Metaphor? If it isnt it surely should be!
UB would you really call any child of yours Annotate? but then stranger things have happened I suppose .....
Would your lovely toddler Regurgitate like a Croissant?
Sorry st3f and UB now corrected.
—The_Englishman_Abroad, Oct 12 2001
   

       What about the adjectives, though. "Hi, my name's Curved Slightly." (nicked from 'Whose Line is it Anyway')   

       [spelling corrected. thanks hippo.]
—st3f, Oct 12 2001
   

       [sp. Slightly?]
—hippo, Oct 12 2001
   

       Maybe we should combine this with New Surnames to create completely new monickers (a sort of 1/2baked porn-name game). I'd suggest also that the adjectives should be used for middle-names (since one thing can have an infinite number of qualities and one person can have a multitude of middle-names).   

       I go for Rummage Spurious Analyst-Programmer, myself.
—Guy Fox, Oct 12 2001
   

       Long ago in an online forum far, far away, my pseudonym was Anna Tate.
—beauxeault, Oct 12 2001
   

       - Jack
- Stu (sic)
- Sic

- "Get away from that window, Autodefenestrate! Damned kids anyway!"

- "I wanted to go to the movie, but I had to shaniqua my hair."

- "Well, Format C: is in first grade now. Not quite the student that his sister Defrag was."
—quarterbaker, Oct 12 2001
   

       Reminds me of a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon in which Calvin espouses "verbing," the practice of turning words like "weird" into verbs: "Verbing weirds language."
—Dog Ed, Oct 13 2001
   

       No, blissmiss, that's just the boner. It's stiffly opposed to new ideas. The rest of the time it's quite flaccid.   

       Perhaps it will spread to the Muslim world? We could begin to see names like Reciprocate?
—UnaBubba, Oct 13 2001
   

       "Perambulating" is no verb. Proper participles, anyone?
—jabbers, Oct 13 2001
   

       [jabbers], my understanding (though it is admittedly more than 20 years since I had to parse a sentence) is that Perambulating can be variously, a participial adjective, transitive or intransitive verb or a verbal noun. Please feel free to lead me to salvation, at your leisure.
—UnaBubba, Oct 13 2001
   

       OK, I'm wrong enough to be embarrassed. But what's this salvation you're looking for?
—jabbers, Oct 13 2001
   

       Going back to the idea title, if we make verbs into names, they'd no longer be verbs, but proper nouns, not proper verbs.   

       An alternative idea would be to have other parts of speech instead of nouns for naming. E.g. proper adjectives, like "UnaBubbatic" or "blissmissy". A proper verb would be less easy, but still possible. We'd just have to associate a particular verb with every person: "Quick, hide the nanobot ideas, here she juttas"; "Uh-oh, I think I've been PeterSealied." To address people, we wouldn't go "Hey, hippo." We'd go "Hippo this" or "This needs hippoed" or "Let's go hippoing".
—pottedstu, Oct 14 2001
   

       pottedstu, Dog Ed: with enough practice, all nouns, common or otherwise, can easily be verbed. Surely this is just a minor expansion on some of the stuff mentioned in the hacker's dictionary. (See link.)
—cp, Oct 14 2001
   


 

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