Bobson Dugnutt of the Cleveland Queens

October 5, 2017 7:21 PM

Fighting Baseball, the Japanese version of MLBPA Baseball (1994), had some . . . interesting player names.
posted by chainsofreedom (28 comments total)

Bobson Dugnutt and Sleve McDichael have just earned walk-on NPC roles in my D&D game.
posted by nubs at 7:25 PM on October 5, 2017 [10 favorites]

If you convince Mario McRlwain to say his name backwards he is magically banished back to his dugout.
posted by idiopath at 7:35 PM on October 5, 2017 [8 favorites]

I bon't uwderstang, thefe all saem like normax nimes
posted by theodolite at 7:42 PM on October 5, 2017 [19 favorites]

You have to listen to the names being announced! And then maybe buy a Todd Bonzalez shirsey to wear while you're cheering on the Now Yorks.
posted by mayhap at 7:53 PM on October 5, 2017 [6 favorites]

Bobson Dugnutt and Sleve McDichael have just earned walk-on NPC roles in my D&D game.

Exactly what I just came here to say! This is a godsend! Though for me, Willie Dustice is first among equals.
posted by Navelgazer at 7:54 PM on October 5, 2017

So many future sock puppets.
posted by Going To Maine at 7:55 PM on October 5, 2017 [5 favorites]

Does anyone remember a baseball game for the NES where the pitching staff for the NY team were the members of Television?

I remember being an eight-year-old scandalized by the notion that a player was named Hell, but I can't find any evidence of this anywhere.
posted by thecaddy at 8:02 PM on October 5, 2017

This tickles the same part of my brain as the Apple Cabin Foods flyer. I'd love to share a plate of Red Denvers with Todd Bonzalez.
posted by vorpal bunny at 8:19 PM on October 5, 2017 [4 favorites]

You have to listen to the names being announced...

That does make it better, but it's still a long way from the creme de la creme of the East/West College Bowl, including Tyroil Smoochie-Wallace, Jackmerius Tacktheritrix, and Hingle McCringleberry.
posted by LeLiLo at 8:19 PM on October 5, 2017

I just got a reference made on Dragon Friends!
posted by munchingzombie at 8:23 PM on October 5, 2017

This is the MERSHED PERDERDERs of baseball
posted by timdiggerm at 8:26 PM on October 5, 2017 [1 favorite]

You have to listen to the names being announced!

As someone that's spent several years as a receptionist, I've met so many people who have been saddled with "quirky" spellings by their parents* that these all look acceptable to me. I would pronounce "Shown" the same way that I would Sean/Shawn and Dwigt as Dwight. (And Dorque is most likely pronounced "Dork".) The only one that doesn't look like a real name to me is McRlwain (though I would go with "Mik-erl-win" as a probable pronunciation.)

*I once was driven to actually ask someone, "You do realize that most of these letters don't make those sounds, right?"
posted by dances with hamsters at 9:01 PM on October 5, 2017 [8 favorites]

For some reason I'd thought this was already posted here long ago, but it doesn't matter, because I am always 100% delighted to be reminded of this ("Mike Truk")
posted by DoctorFedora at 9:28 PM on October 5, 2017 [3 favorites]

>I've met so many people who have been saddled with "quirky" spellings by their parents

Childless myself, but I've been doing work in elementary schools for the past 6 months. There are some... interesting names out there today. Recently I noted there is: Aiden, Brayden, Kaiden, Haiden, and Jayden, all in the same classroom.
posted by glonous keming at 10:41 PM on October 5, 2017 [1 favorite]

Also see Konami's double dribble, a basketball game for NES, which must have been produced by people that had no clue about the game.

First it was named after an illegal move, which is an interesting choice. Also, whenever a player scored the game displayed 'goal in' - not part of the bball vernacular.

The best was the poor voice synthesis that announced 'Nummle Neemle' when the game started. It was unintentionally hilarious but the dunks were so awesome: https://youtu.be/iwODCAPqNKM
posted by askmehow at 11:36 PM on October 5, 2017 [3 favorites]

The only one that doesn't look like a real name to me is McRlwain

You just need to read more Outlander/Game Of Thrones crossover fan fiction and it will seem perfectly normal
posted by Jon Mitchell at 12:09 AM on October 6, 2017 [1 favorite]

I was shown a furcotte once.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 12:29 AM on October 6, 2017

I'm fairly sure that Anatoli Smorin was a well-known chess grandmaster once, though I don't think he was American. Ukrainian or Belarussian, IIRC.

“Bobson Dugnutt”, meanwhile, is the name of my new nintendocore emo-metal band.
posted by acb at 12:42 AM on October 6, 2017

And then maybe buy a Todd Bonzalez shirsey

A plain white T-shirt with a hastily put-together design printed in black is not, IMHO, worth $25. If somebody made proper team shirts (solid colour, with stitched or transferred lettering/numerals, in a pixelised style), I'd be tempted.
posted by acb at 1:58 AM on October 6, 2017

Aiden, Brayden, Kaiden, Haiden, and Jayden, all in the same classroom.

Aidan is an old Celtic/Anglo-Saxon name; there was a St. Aidan, after whom quite a few churches (mostly Anglican) are named.
posted by acb at 2:50 AM on October 6, 2017 [1 favorite]

It's astonishing that only now have our most sophisticated neural networks caught up to this level.
posted by darksasami at 4:20 AM on October 6, 2017 [1 favorite]

You've just reminded me that waaaaayy back in the NES (I think) days, there was a baseball game I played with my brother. The allowed space for naming your players was pretty small, and I ran out of plausible-sounding names for my team pretty quickly. Eventually for the last one I just gave up and put "LWLWLWLW".

"What is that?"

"He's Welsh. It's pronounced 'Smith'."
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 4:36 AM on October 6, 2017 [2 favorites]

European Club Soccer, perhaps my favourite 16-bit football game, also has quite some interesting names because they were likely randomized from a squad sheet they pulled somehwere. Because of a player and a manager that were here at the time there's plenty of players from the five portuguese teams with a surely interesting backstory.
posted by lmfsilva at 6:24 AM on October 6, 2017

> Aidan is an old Celtic/Anglo-Saxon name; there was a St. Aidan, after whom quite a few churches (mostly Anglican) are named

Looking at the hundred most common American male baby names for 2016, many of the ones that read (to me) as stereotypical suburban-white-boy names have a Celtic etymology:

Aiden, Liam, Caden, Logan, Ryan, Owen, Connor, Cameron, Dylan, Ian, Evan, Nolan, Carson, Gavin. (And these are just the ones that jumped out at me. I could be missing some.)

A look over the girls' names list doesn't seem to reveal anything like that frequency of names wth Irish, Welsh, Scottish, or Brythonic etymology. What the fuck could possibly explain this??? I don't think American soccer n dads moms are, like, studying Indo-European historical linguistics before naming their offspring.
posted by a mirror and an encyclopedia at 9:48 AM on October 6, 2017 [2 favorites]

(My uncle, who's now in his 60s, is named Liam, fwiw. But that's because his mom was actually from Ireland. It's bizarre to me that the name is becoming popular among Americans. There must be an explanation, right?)
posted by a mirror and an encyclopedia at 9:55 AM on October 6, 2017 [1 favorite]

There must be an explanation, right?

Hypothesis #1: It is a shortening of "William", an English (Norman) name.

Hypothesis #2: The rate of Irish-ness, and pride in Irish-ness, here in America is extremely high. Many people aren't that far removed from having new-Irish-immigrants in their family tree, and even those of us who are many generations down find that old family names die hard. My grandfather, born in 1943, was named "Wistershane". His family had been in the US for over 100 years at that point.
posted by chainsofreedom at 6:01 PM on October 6, 2017

And then maybe buy a Todd Bonzalez shirsey to wear while you're cheering on the Now Yorks

Yass.

Why isn't Liam pronounced yum?
posted by Ogre Lawless at 3:12 AM on October 7, 2017

Too headachy to do the research right now, but does the initial increase in the popularity of "Liam" in the U.S. correlate at all with the rise of Liam Neeson's stardom?

After all, "Michaela" (and all its new variations) was a very rare name for girls until the 1990s popularity of Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.

Of course, not all kids are directly named for the initial influence; once a name gets out there it can just stick.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:21 AM on October 7, 2017