Or, the belief that a person's name can affect their choice of career or outlook on life.

Ronald Reagan's Press Secretary, Larry Speakes;

Future astronaut Buzz Aldrin (back left) standing next to his mother, Marion Aldrin nee Moon;

this is one I found on the web;

http://www.drjohnpayne.co.uk/

Estate agents.

Nuff said.

Notice that the MD of Danone Dairy was stepping down.

His name, Bruno Fromage;

http://www.just-food.com/news/danone-uk-head-fromage-steps-down_id116166.aspx

Famous neurologist Russell Brain ...


First woman to hurdle 400m in under 53 seconds, Marina Stepanova ...


And of course our old friend Thomas Crapper (he of flush toilet fame) ...


The opposite to an aptronym (as the ones above) is of course an inaptronym. Some notable examples are ...

Singer with the pop group Coil who died when he fell from a two storey balcony, John Balance ...


The only member of ZZ Top who didn't sport a beard when they were famous, Frank Beard ...


Ex Ku Klux Klan leader and prominent white supremacist, Don Black ...

The poet, William Wordsworth;



still chuckling at Don Black.

Sometimes called the 'Father of Fleet Street' - the 15th Century printer and publisher Wynken de Worde:

There have been an impressive amount of track athletes in the past who ran for a living (and some today too) called Walker. I have often wondered whether they felt they had someting to prove.

There is an American racing driver called Scott Speed;

On April 29th 2014 a 62 year old Canadian man was arrested for revealing his privates to unsuspecting female visitors to Ottawa's Mooney's Bay Park. His name was Don Popadick.

nordmann wrote:

On April 29th 2014 a 62 year old Canadian man was arrested for revealing his privates to unsuspecting female visitors to Ottawa's Mooney's Bay Park. His name was Don Popadick.

Given the location, he was dropping the wrong part of his attire.

I forgot this lassie when we were discussing aptonyms earlier ...



Margaret - the Australian tennis player best remembered for her exploits on her surname.

I was recently reading The Storm written in 1704 by Daniel Defoe. The author is famous for his novels Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders and A Journal of the Plague Year. That last was a fictional account written more than 50 years after the event when Defoe was still a child. The Storm, however, is not a novel but is a work of contemporary history chronicling the Great Storm which struck southern Britain, northern France and the Low Countries in 1703 when Defoe was in his forties. A large part of the book is given over to reproducing accounts, reports and letters written by eyewitnesses from various parts of England and Wales. These correspondences tend to provide grim listings of the deaths of people from shipwrecks and tidal surges, those killed by falling trees, collapsing barns and tumbling chimney pots, ships foundered at sea, smashed on rocks or dashed against pier heads, buildings unroofed, livestock drowned, woodland flattened and other tales of destruction. However, one report from Grimsby in Lincolnshire (at the northern limit of the storm’s path) reads as follows:

SIR, - The late dreadful tempest did not (blessed be God) much affect us on shore, so far was it from having any events more than common, that the usual marks of ordinary storms are not to be met with in these parts upon the land … This is all the account I am able to give of the effects of the late storm, which was so favourable to us. I am, Sir, your most humble servant,
THO. FAIRWEATHER

The first trams in London started in 1860 when a horse tramway began operating along Victoria Street in Westminster. The trams were popular with passengers and so the fledgeling network started to expand but there was strong opposition as the first designs had rails that stood proud of the road surface, like a standard railway line, and so created an obstruction for other traffic. Moreover it subsequently emerged that the tram company had been installing their rail tracks along London's streets without first seeking any permission from the authorities or local residents (the people that had to pay to maintain the streets). Accordingly in 1861, just a year after the first tram tracks had been laid, the company's founder was arrested for "breaking and injuring" the Uxbridge Road: his plans for a city wide network were stopped and all the tracks were removed. This brazen tram entrepeneur was an eccentric American, George Francis Train.

Eventually Parliament passed legislation permitting tram services on the condition that the rails were recessed into the carriageway so that the tramways could be shared with other road users and with the costs of maintenance of the tramway and its immediately neighbouring road carriageway being borne by the tram companies. After a demonstration line was built at the Crystal Palace, the first lines were authorised by the Act of Parliament in 1870. But by then George Train was back in the USA working to promote the Union Pacific Railroad and the Atlantic and Great Western Railroad (his association with both railroad companies made him a fortune). He also found time to run for the Presidency of the USA and twice circumnavigated the world in less than 80days, a feat that possibly inspired Jules Verne's novel 'Around the World in Eighty Days'.