I recall always thinking from the start that the name "Namor" was odd...
I wasn't sure why.
As a child, I asked my mom how to pronounce "Sub-Mariner" and got the correct interpretation based upon "the rhyme of the Ancient Mariner".
But when I asked about Namor, she sounded it out wrong, and for ever, I thought it rhymed with "Hammer". It wasn't until I heard the Marvel SuperHeroes cartoons (right).... that I heard the narrator say "NAY-mor". But it was a hard habbit to break.
Then one day, it occured to me that it was a trick name. "Namor" was "Roman" spelled backwards!
I had a clue to his royal bearing, his regal nature. The subtext.
Years later, I learned somewhere that that is exactly how and why they named him that.
But now I'm beginning to wonder, what other "trick" or puzzles might have been included in character names. (I'm talking more than Stan's fascination with repeating first letters.... like Reed Richards, Sue Storm, Doctor Doom, Larry Leiber, etc.
What other hidden names or tricks or references have you found in comic book character names?
Replies
Clark Kent for Clark Savage (Doc Savage) and Kent Allard (the Shadow)
Barry Allen for Barry Gray and Steve Allen
Ray Palmer for a noted sci-fi writer who was a short man
Kathy and Betty Kane for Bob Kane
Edward Nigma or E. Nigma for the Riddler
Basil Karlo for Boris Karloff for the Golden Age Clayface
According to her origin Modesty Blaise supplied her surname after Merlin's tutor, Blaise. I belatedly realised the other day that Peter O'Donnell really named her for the sound, "Blaze".
Mr Little, from Jack Kirby's 70s run on Black Panther, was Abner Little, which is "Little (Li'l) Abner" backwards.
Some of the names of the charaters in The Eternals were obvious corruptions of familiar names, but others were easier to miss. Sersi was Circe (but I might add in ancient Greek the cs of Circe's name are hard). "Kro" was probably "Crow", and "Valkin" (the name of the leader of the Polar Eternals) "Falcon".
Kamandi was named after the bunker in which he was raised, Command D. I don't think this was mentioned often in the original series, but it's indicated in the first issue in a caption.
Matter-Eater Lad's home planet.
One of the sneakier ones occurred during the New Blackhawk Era---that misbegotten period when the Black Knights adopted super-hero identities. While Stan, Olaf, Chop Chop, and the others assumed names like the Golden Centurion, the Leaper, Doctor Hands, and the like, along with individual costumes, their intrepid leader clung to his crimson-and-olive Blackhawk duds.
However, he did assume a new cognomen, though it wasn't used all that much and he was still called "Blackhawk" by just about everybody. That new sobriquet was "the Big Eye"---for no apparent in-story reason.
It was a few years after the New Blackhawk Era, when I was finishing out my run of Blackhawk and had purchased a couple of issues from that time to plug a couple of gaps, that it finally dawned on me . . . .
The Big Eye = "the Big Guy", i.e., the man in charge.
Big Bertha of the Great Lakes Avengers was presumably named after a weapon of this name used by the Germans in WWI, or indirectly so via something else presumably named after it (e.g. according to Wikipedia some mid-century long-lensed cameras were known by this name). The weapon might also lie behind the name "Big Barda".
I learned from Wikipedia that the name was earlier the nickname of a 19th century con-woman profiled in Thomas F. Byrnes's 1886 Professional Criminals of America.
Philip Portelli said:
That's a common misconception, Philip. In an April, 1992 interview by Harry Mietkiewicz, a reporter for The Toronto Star, Joe Shuster stated that the name of "Clark Kent" was derived from actors Clark Gable and Kent Taylor.
Julius Schwartz interated the account while being interviewed himself. Schwartz related that he once asked Jerry Siegel where he came up with the name "Clark Kent".
Siegle replied that he chose the name "Clark" after the most romantic movie-idol of the time, Clark Gable.
As for the "Kent", Siegel told Schwartz, "My wife's brother-in-law is Kent Taylor, a movie actor from back in the '40's. So 'Kent' came from Kent Taylor."
"Triplicate Girl" was probably a joke on filling in forms in triplicate.
Luke Blanchard said:
Speaking of the Great Lakes Avengers, the sobriquet of another of its members---Dinah Soar---is a pun deeply wrapped within a pun.
Dinah Shore (1916-94), for those who came in late, was a popular singer and actress and television star. She was the spokeswoman for Chervrolet for decades and sang the auto's most popular jingle ("See the U.S.A. in your Chevrolet! America is asking you to call . . . ."; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQ5tKh0aBDc one of the fondest memories of my childhood.)
From that we jump to The Beany and Cecil Show, an animated cartoon which ran one season in 1962. Beany and Cecil, as it was colloquially known, had a peculiar pedigree, even for television. The cartoon characters, created by Bob Clampett, had essentially hijacked the programme on which they had been a single segment---Matty's Funday Funnies.
Matty's Funday Funnies was a prime-time animated show that aired on Sundays, beginning in 1959, with Beany and Cecil appearing as a single cartoon on the show. Beany and Cecil proved to be so popular that it started edging the other cartoons out of the show. By 1962, all of the other animated features of the show were gone, including its host, Mattel Toy spokes-cartoon Matty Mattel. The producers threw in the towel and renamed the programme The Beany and Cecil Show for its final season in 1962.
But, before Matty and his Funday Funnies, Beany and Cecil had enjoyed a previous existence, not as animated characters, but as puppets, in the television series Time for Beany, which ran from 1949 to 1954.
No matter which version it was, Beany and Cecil pelted its audience with so much material so fast that it made Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In look like a chess tournament. Besides the ostensive slapstick humour for the kiddies, there was plenty of adult-sized puns, sight gags, racy lines, and double entendres.
In the first episode of the cartoon series after it was renamed The Beany and Cecil Show, airing on 06 January 1962---and here's where I get back to the point of this thread and this post---one of the segments, "Cecil Meets the Singing Dinosaur", showed our intrepid band---boy Beany; Captain Huffenpuff; and Cecil, the Seasick Sea Serpent---visiting a lost prehistoric land. Here they make the acquaintance of Dinah Saur, a pop-singing, jazz-warbling lady dinosaur who "just happens" to sound like singer/actress Dinah Shore, right down to her Mississippi accent.
(The show was renowned for its pun-laced lampoons of popular real-life stars. A muscle-bound, vitamin-popping jungle cat, "Tear-a-Long, the Dotted Lion", sent up fitness guru Jack LaLanne, while French-accented lounge-singer "Jacques the Knife", skewered Bobby Darin and Frank Sinatra's Rat Pack in general.)
So now you might see where this is going: you have celebrity Dinah Shore and you have her Beany and Cecil send up, Dinah Saur. Mix them together into the lady member of the Great Lakes Avengers, the one who resembles a pterodactyl (another type of dinosaur) and has a vocal-related super-power, and you name her---Dinah Soar!
And, of course, Ultra Boy (Jo Nah) got his powers when he was swallowed by a space whale.
Commander Benson said:
There are two things going on in these: the names inspired by literary or real-life figures (Ray Palmer), and the puns (Jo Nah).
There are also the heroes and villains who have names based on something related to their lives, because the writers were too lazy to think up a different name. Those could start with Victor Von Doom and Mr. Fries (aka Mr. Freeze).
Some of my favorites: Julian Gregory Day, aka The Calendar Man, Roy G. Bivolo, aka the Rainbow Raider and good old Ed Nigma. They almost had no chance to do anything else! And is it coincidence that Pamela Isley became Poison Ivy or that Otto Octavius gained something related to eight?
On the other side, Batman was named for Sir Robert the Bruce and Mad Anthony Wayne. The most ironic was GL, who was going to be named Alan Ladd, to allude to his magic lantern (which Aladdin also had), but they decided “Alan Ladd” sounded too much like a made-up name. Heh. You have to wonder what Darkseid (does that count?) thought about raising a kid on his prison-like planet with the name Scott Free.
I think the all-time worse one was Captain Atom, who was really Captain Adam. "I've got to revert from my Captain Atom identity to become Captain Adam!" he would say. Anyone who heard him must've thought he was insane.
Then there are the “clues” that the writers included in the stories by turning a person’s name into an anagram or reversing it. To this day, when I see an odd name in a story, I read it backwards to see if it makes sense. Thus, Lena Thorul didn’t fool me for long, and when Jimmy Olsen needed a TV horror name, he became Neslo.
The one fooler was always Ditko. He loved to end names with “C” and create spellings that *looked* better spelled backwards but still didn’t spell anything.
-- MSA
-
1
-
2
-
3
-
4
of 4 Next