Monday, November 09, 2009

Parrot gnaws Nutt while Balls gets in Brown's ear

Novelists sometimes chose character names to reflect their character's character or interests.* There's probably a term for that practice.

On this basis, Britain currently seems more like a novel:

* the decision to have compulsory sex education (as noted in the previous post) was made by Secretary Balls;

* Professor Nutt has been in the news because of his disputing whether cannabis really does send that many people nuts;

* Professor Nutt has been attacked by Professor Parrott, with some accusing him of parroting conservatism;

* Gordon Brown seems about as convivial and happy as a brown painted room.

Perhaps Evelyn Waugh has taken over authorship of the country.

* (Help, I'm sure someone can improve that sentence!)

2 comments:

TimT said...

'Reflect their character's personality'?

In real life when this happens it's called an aptonym. For instance, there's a gambling expert somewhere in the world called Chris Moneymaker. Also there's a chap in Australia called Chris Watters who is an expert in alcohol regulation. It happens, a lot.

Geoff said...

I've heard it called nominative determinism. For example Dr Winkle and Dr Pisko were both predestined to be urologists.