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Gag name
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A gag name is a false name used to elicit humor through its simultaneous resemblance to a real name on the one hand, and to a term or phrase that is funny, strange, or vulgar on the other hand. The source of the humor is the pun and double entendre; frequently, the humor arises when an unknowing victim is induced to use the name without realizing the joke. Urban legend holds that such a prank is often played on substitute teachers or others who must read a roll, for whom pranksters will switch the roll with one containing such names.
Some names that would be considered gag names have been adopted as stage names by performers, often in the adult entertainment industry.
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Encyclopedia
A gag name is a false name used to elicit humor through its simultaneous resemblance to a real name on the one hand, and to a term or phrase that is funny, strange, or vulgar on the other hand. The source of the humor is the pun and double entendre; frequently, the humor arises when an unknowing victim is induced to use the name without realizing the joke. Urban legend holds that such a prank is often played on substitute teachers or others who must read a roll, for whom pranksters will switch the roll with one containing such names.
Some names that would be considered gag names have been adopted as stage names by performers, often in the adult entertainment industry. Mr. Dumas, Steve Cock, Lou Bitgood, Skeets Mears, Pat McGroin ("pat my groin"), Mike Oxlong ("my cock's long"), Mike Oxsmall ("my cock's small"}, Berry Mikokiner (Bury My Cock in her), Phil McCracken ("fill my crack in"), Master Bates ("masturbates"), Seymore Butts ("see more butts"), Mike Hawk ("my cock"), Mike Hunt ("my cunt"), York Hunt ("your cunt"), Heywood Jablome ("hey, would you blow me?"), Hugh Jacoc ("huge cock"), Hugh Jass ("huge ass"), Hugh G. Rection ("huge erection"), Dick Hertz ("dick hurts"), Harry Wang ("hairy wang"), Dick Vanpatten, Hugh Janus ("huge anus"), Connie Lingus ("cunnilingus"), Kraven Moorehed ("craving more head"), Jack Mehoff ("jack me off"), Shi Ton Mi ("shit on me"), Saul Good, Hu Hung Lo ("you hung low"), Mike Okslonger ("my cock's longer"), Dick Gozinya ("dick goes in you"), Harry Weener ("hairy wiener"), Dixie Normus ("dick's enormous"), Dixie Rect ("dick's erect"), Howie Feltersnatch ("how he felt her snatch"), Jack Offalot ("jack off a lot"), Moe Lester ("molester"), Halotta Fagina ("a lot of vagina"), Harry P. Nass ("hairy penis"), Wee Tard ("retard"), Eric Shin ("erection"), Phil Uranus ("fill your anus"), Stu Pidass ("stupid ass"), Gabe Uttseks ("gay butt sex"), Ben Dover ("bend over"), Eric Hunt ("her cunt"), Maya Sole ("my asshole"), Anee Tapoosi ("I need a pussy"), Harry Bolz ("hairy balls"), Jenny Tulls ("genitals"), Seeyomeed Rif ("see your midriff"), Juan King ("wanking"), Art Hard ("our 'tard"), Ima Gaiman ("I'm a gay man"), and Phil Latio. Gag names can also be applied to businesses, such as Howard Stern's use of the fictitious Sofa King: in a hoax ad, the store was described as being "Sofa King great" (i.e., "so fucking great"). A January 18, 2000, FCC complaint for using the phrase was dismissed. A similar sketch was performed on Saturday Night Live in early 2007 , portraying Sofa King as a new store opening after the success of Mattress King.
Examples in fiction
An early example of a contrived name being put to comedic effect is the Abbott and Costello bit "Who's on First?", describing a baseball team with players such as "Who" playing first base, "What" playing second, and "I Don't Know" on third. In the routine, Abbott identifies the players, but Costello is unable to discern that he is actually being told the names.
The majority of the characters in the Stanley Kubrick film Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb have gag names, many of them of a sexual nature, like the titular character, Merkin Muffley, Jack D. Ripper, Colonel "Bat" Guano and Buck Turgidson.
In the 1982 teen comedy Porky's, one scene involves the character Pee Wee calling into the bar from a payphone in the car park and asking to speak to Mike Hunt. The young barmaid, oblivious to the gag, proceeds to call out the name in several different contexts, each progressively more amusing.
James Bond films often use double-entendre gags in the names of Bond girls, such as Bibi Dahl from For Your Eyes Only, Xenia Onatopp from Goldeneye, Chu Mei (chew me) from The Man With The Golden Gun, Plenty O'Toole from Diamonds Are Forever and most famously, Pussy Galore from Goldfinger. This is parodied in the Austin Powers series of spoofs on the spy genre; Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery features a villain named Alotta Fagina, who must repeat her name several times because Austin misunderstands it. This was followed up in the sequels Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me with the characters Ivana Humpalott and Felicity Shagwell, and in Austin Powers in Goldmember with the Japanese twins Fook Yu and Fook Mi, as well as the character of Dixie Normous in the film-within-a-film, Austinpussy.
The British radio program The Goon Show had a character called "Captain Hugh Jampton", which was a play on "Huge Hampton", Cockney rhyming slang (via "Hampton Wick") for "prick", i.e., "penis". BBC censors initially failed to understand the joke but later banned the character. More recently, BBC Radio 4's comedy panel game I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue features a round called Late Arrivals, in which panellists must provide a gagname related to a particular theme (e.g., for Late Arrivals at the Hairdressers' Ball, panellists might suggest "Please welcome Mr. and Mrs. Druff, and their son, Dan Druff").
In the animated show The Simpsons, Bart Simpson frequently calls Moe's Tavern asking for nonexistent patrons with gag names such as "Amanda Huggenkiss" (prompting Moe to call out to the patrons that he needs "a man to hug and kiss"), "Mike Rotch" (prompting Moe to call out to the patrons asking if they've seen "my crotch"), "Hugh Jass" (prompting Moe to call out to the patrons to check the men's room for a "huge ass," but this prank call backfired, as there actually was a man named Hugh Jass in the bar at the time), or "Homer Sexual" (prompting Moe to call out to the patrons to see of one of them was "homersexual"). The Simpsons gags were based on a real series of prank calls made to a bar in New Jersey.
Saturday Night Live sketches sometimes make use of gag names. One starring Robert De Niro had De Niro playing a staffer at a press conference, supposedly reading "tips" called in to a national security hotline. All of the names on the list of terrorists to watch for were in fact gag names along the lines of "M'balz es-Hari", "Haid D'Salaami", "Mustaf Herod Apyur Poupr", "Usuqa M'diq", "Hous bin Phartin", and "I'zheet m'drawrz", a terrorist who fled town so fast he "left skid marks". The sketch "Colonel Angus" stars Christopher Walken as an American Civil War colonel whose name sounds like "cunnilingus" when spoken in a Southern accent. Patrick Stewart once portrayed a character called "Phil McCracken, Scottish Therapist". In a similar vein, Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers had a pair of recurring characters known as Patrick Fitzwilliam and William Fitzpatrick, who frequently comment that they are aware of the double meaning some find in their names.
In Monty Python's Life of Brian, the title character claims to have been fathered by a Roman named Naughtius Maximus; neither Brian nor Pontius Pilate realize what is obvious to the Roman guards, that this is a gag name. This is explained to Pilate by the guards, who analogize to names such as Sillius Soddus or Biggus Dickus. Pilate responds that he has a "vewy good fwiend in Wome named Biggus Dickus", and has the guards who laugh at the name or that of Dickus' wife - Incontinentia Buttocks - thrown to the lions.
On the radio show Car Talk, the end credits begin with the real technical personnel of the show, but are extended to three or four times their natural length by the addition of multiple gag names. Perennial staffers include "Paul Murkey of Murkey Research" and his statistician "Marge Innovera" and Russian driver "Pikov Andropov" ("pick-up and drop-off); and lawyers "Dewey, Cheatham and Howe". New names are featured almost every week.
National Lampoon's High School Yearbook Parody from the early 1970s took this concept to an extreme, with "class pictures" of hundreds of students, all of which were assigned fake names (such as A. Pancho, A. Cisco). A TV ad for GEICO, which chided the abuse of person-to-person collect calls to deliver messages without paying for them, featured a man calling his parents and claiming to be "Bob Wehadababyitzaboy". The film The Master of Disguise (2002) featured a character named Pistachio Disguisey; this prompted film critic Roger Ebert to make a general evaluation of gag names, "the First Law of Funny Names, which is that funny names in movies are rarely funny."
The original Brøderbund-produced Carmen Sandiego computer games extensively used gag names on V.I.L.E. agents, often giving them names which suggested a criminal record such as "Robin Banks", "Ivana Steele" or "Luke N. Ferloot". Later on, ACME agents were too given such names. However, the newer games created under The Learning Company seem to have abandoned this convention.
Big Johnson produced counterculture T-shirts based on the exploits of E. Normus Johnson starting in the 1980s using double entendre references to the phallic slang meaning of the term Johnson.
On the radio serial "The Wilsons of Warwick" (a show-within-a-show, part of WTBQ's "The Hawkeye Show"), one character introduces himself as "Um, Smith...yeah, that's it, Smith." When challenged, Smith insists his real name is, in fact, John Umsmithyeahthatsitsmith.
In Rowan Atkinson's 'headmaster sketch' first featured in the Secret Policeman's Ball, he refers to a Russian exchange student 'Suckmeov.'
In the Murphy Brown tv series, the bartender at Phil's, a hangout for the crew of FYI, once answered the phone and told the others someone called and asked to speak to Harry Balz (hairy balls).
The Ace Attorney series of games (featuring Phoenix Wright) features many characters with full or partial gag names, in both the Japanese and English language versions. In the English version, full gag names include (but are not limited to) the police detective "Dick Gumshoe" (both parts of his name being slang for "detective"), the prosecutor "Winston Payne" (who has difficulty getting his point across), and a talkative octogenarian witness named "Wendy Oldbag". Partial gag names include "Frank Sahwit" (a witness in Phoenix's very first case, who apparently "saw it" happen), a clan of spirit mediums all named "Fey", as well as others.
Much of The Twelfth Man's earlier recordings were based around joke names.
In the British show "IT crowd" Jen dates a man for one episode called Peter File.
The short-run Broadway musical The Best Little Whorehouse Goes Public features Senator A. Harry Hardast.
In the movie Black Sheep, Chris Farley pretends he's a police officer named Jack Mehoff.
In MTV's Beavis and Butthead, Butthead tells his substitute teacher that his name is Joe Momma, while another student calls himself Heugh G. Rection. In one episode, Beavis and Butthead make prank calls to a man named Harry Sachz.
In an episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force, one character tricks Frylock, Meatwad, and Carl into saying "I am sofa king we Todd Ed (I am so fucking retarded)". In another instance, Oglethorpe and Emory try to prank call Ignigknot and Err (in an eventually failed attempt,) by asking for "Mike Hunt." Ignigknot and Err return the favor by calling and asking for "Oliver Klohsoff" and "Holden McGroyne."
Examples in reality
In the mid-1970s two young men by the names of Jim Davidson and John Elmo frequently called the Tube Bar, a tavern owned by Louis "Red" Deutsch, asking for names; like Hugh Jass and Al Coholic. This is copied in The Simpsons when Bart repeatedly calls Moe's Tavern as one of the show's running gags.
On September 3, 2004, Bill O'Reilly was the butt of a prank during his show on the Fox News Channel:
- Jack Mehoffer, Springfield, Massachusetts, says: 'O'Reilly, I see the new Fox definition of fair and balanced means interviewing DNC chief Terry McAuliffe at both conventions.' Well, right you are, Mr. Mehoffer!...
"Jack Mehoffer" is a pun for "jack me off-er", slang for male masturbation. O'Reilly, evidently unaware of the prank, may have spoiled the joke by pronouncing the last name as MAY-hoffer, and a second time as "MAY-er-hoffer"
The name "Anita" is often employed in such jokes for its similarity to the phrase "I need a...", such as "Anita Bath" in the Simpsons episode "The PTA Disbands". This phrase has also been adopted in porn star names, such as Anita Blond and Anita Dark.
On April 13, 2003, James Scott of the Charleston, South Carolina, paper The Post and Courier reported that "Heywood Jablome" (a pun for "Hey, would you blow me?", "blow" being slang for fellatio) was escorted from the premises while counterprotesting Martha Burk's protest at The Masters Tournament. He subsequently admitted to his being "duped" by the protester, who was in reality a morning disc jockey for a regional FM radio station.
In Tim Allen's 1995 book "Don't Stand Too Close To A Naked Man", he talks about the use of his real last name, Dick, by joking his father was a Dick, his brother was a Dick, and his mother was a Dick, even his Uncle Richard, a double Dick.
Occasionally, real persons with a name that could also be read as a funny or vulgar phrase are the subject of mockery or parody because of their name. For example, Chinese Premier Hu Jintao, whose surname is pronounced like "who", has occasionally been the topic of "Who's on First"–type discussions.
Other examples of real people with gag-sounding names:
Also, in an episode of Bam's Unholy Union, Bam Margera meets a man in a bar named Dusan Mandic, currently living and working with Derek Salustro in Kent, Ohio. Mandic even showed Margera an ID card with the name Dusan Mandic. In fact, Dusan Mandic is the real name of the individual that Bam Margera met. However, while Dusan Mandic is the individual's given name, he is commonly referred to by the name "Duke" amongst his friends and peers.
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