Allusionist 88. Name Changers
Why did you change your name? And why did you choose the name you chose?
Listeners answer these two questions. Hear their stories of gender identity, family fallouts, marriages, divorces, doxxing, cults, and…just not liking your given name very much.
Read moreAllusionist 87. Name v. Law
Iceland has quite exacting laws about what its citizens can be named, and only around 4,000 names are on the officially approved list. If you want a name that deviates from that list, you have to send an application to the Icelandic Naming Committee, whose three members will decide whether or not you're allowed it. And if they say you're not...you might have to take things pretty far.
Sigurður Konráðsson, foreman of the Icelandic Naming Committee, explains the committee’s objectives. And comedian, writer and former mayor of Reykjavik Jón Gnarr describes his 25-year fight to change his name.
Read moreAllusionist 86. Name Therapy
“It's the word that you use the most often and the soonest to describe yourself, and yet nobody's really ever talked about how it kind of makes me feel like this.” Until Duana Taha, who, after a lifetime of feelings about her own name, became the Name Therapist.
Read moreAllusionist 83. Yes, As In
"Really? As in the animal/foodstuff/music genre?"
"Is that a stripper name?"
"What were your parents thinking?"
Allusionist 73. Supername!
Up in the sky: look! It's an adjective! It's a noun! It's...Adjectivenoun!
Your friendly neighbourhood superheroes might have thrilling and varied powers and spandex garments, but the way their names are concocted have followed only a handful of formulae in the past 80 years, since Superman sent superheroes soaring.
(Yes, alliteration is one such naming formula.)
Glen Weldon of Pop Culture Happy Hour traces the supername's development from Adjective+Gender through Colour+Noun to Normal Name and Lone Noun.
Read moreAllusionist 71. Triumph/Trumpet/Top/Fart
It's a year since Donald Trump was inaugurated as the 45th president of the United States. And in that year, he's caused a lot of changes in the job of constitutional law professor Elizabeth Joh of What Trump Can Teach Us About Con Law podcast - in particular, one verb is now off limits.
Plus, Paul Anthony Jones, aka etymologist extraordinaire Haggard Hawks, describes how politicians' names work their way into our vocabularies.
CONTENT NOTE: this episode contains references to the 45th president of the USA. I know a lot of you listen to The Allusionist for a little escape from politics and current affairs, so let me reassure you that there is not much modern politics in the episode; it’s mostly about history and interesting word facts.
Read moreAllusionist 65. Eponyms III: Who's That Guy?
Roman Mars returns for our annual dose of eponyms - words that derive from people's names. This year: explosive revelations about the origins of the word 'guy'.
Read moreAllusionist 45: Eponyms II - Name That Disease
If you love eponyms like Roman Mars loves eponyms, I'm afraid physician Isaac Siemens is here to deliver some bad news: medics are ditching them, in favour of terms that a) contain information about what the ailment actually is, and/or b) don't honour Nazi war criminals. Eponyms are controversial things.
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