| Gaazy
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| 128272. Thu Dec 21, 2006 3:57 am |
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Not strictly nominative determinism, but a world expert on fertility, interviewed on the BBC this morning, is called Dr Minger (rhymes with 'stinger').
Now I didn't know until a couple of years ago two facts about 'minger', viz. a) what it meant, and b) how it was pronounced.
Poor old Dr Minger will now be the source of much sniggering, despite his name having been there first, as it were.
On Wednesday, a guest on a discussion programme averred that her favourite gadget was her 'transistor radio'. In fact she had, she said, a tranny in every room of her house. The panel collapsed in convulsive laughter, betraying the undoubted fact that they were all younger than about 35; 'tranny' for 'transistor radio' for 'portable radio' was standard parlance in the 1960s and 70s, and we oldies slightly resent our phraseology being hijacked.
Up until very recently I was blithely oblivious of the new meaning of 'tranny' and only picked up on it from the context of a feature in Radio Times. |
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| suze
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| 128337. Thu Dec 21, 2006 8:21 am |
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I seem to remember a contrived sentence which went something like
"Damn, I left that tranny of the tranny in the tranny with the tranny"
meaning, of course "Oh lawks a mussy me, I have inadvertently forgotten the slide depicting the cross dresser, having left it in my small van made by the Ford Motor Company where there is also a wireless receiver". |
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| Pom
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| 128342. Thu Dec 21, 2006 8:35 am |
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I always liked the sign outside a factory that read
"Smith's Organ Works" |
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| djgordy
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| 128343. Thu Dec 21, 2006 8:37 am |
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| On the same line, there is an LP called "Bach's Great Organ Works". Some people just know the meaning of the word "modesty". |
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| Ameena
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| 128493. Thu Dec 21, 2006 5:46 pm |
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| Hmm all this talk of trannies and no mention of Eddie...? |
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| Gaazy
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| 128562. Fri Dec 22, 2006 4:51 am |
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For the second half of the 1970s, the Topper comic's front-page strip was called 'Danny's Tranny', and had to do with a magic portable radio:
| Quote: | Danny's transistor radio doesn't operate like a normal radio. At the touch of one of its buttons, it fires out a beam of light and anything caught in that beam is transformed - the LW button causes things to grow, the SW button causes them to shrink, the MW makes them lighter than air, and the VHF renders them invisible.
All the effects last only a few seconds, a minute at most, and no harm comes to the objects transformed (at least not from the transformation itself).
Danny is sufficiently skilled with the radio's beam to affect only parts of an object or person, and can either make them increase uniformly in all dimensions, or simply stretch to enormous lengths.
Danny hails from the 1970's, an earlier age where a "tranny" was a kind of radio and had no other possible meanings. |
(from http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/d/danytran.htm) |
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| Ian Dunn
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| 129969. Sat Dec 30, 2006 4:43 am |
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I think I've found a rather disturbing piece of what may be seen as nominative determinism, but instead of a person, it is a place.
A man from Elloughton Grove, Hull, was beaten to death and shot whilst walking his dog. His body was found on a railway line, between Hornbeam Drive and Snuff Mill Lane, Cottingham.
BBC Story |
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| BigHairyMonster
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| 177623. Thu May 24, 2007 12:04 pm |
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...and the thread is back from the grave.
I just discovered that the US Secretary of Education is named...
Margaret Spellings. |
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| Archie
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| 177624. Thu May 24, 2007 12:09 pm |
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| grizzly wrote: | | Prof Wind Up Merchant wrote: | You could have a DIY merchant called
Will U. Fixit |
Surely Bob Will Fixit |
Or Jim |
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| Long Haired Hippy
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| 177834. Fri May 25, 2007 5:38 am |
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| BigHairyMonster wrote: | ...and the thread is back from the grave.
I just discovered that the US Secretary of Education is named...
Margaret Spellings. |
Reminds me of the Spitting Image sketch regarding Larry Speakes.
He was Ranald Regan's spokesperson and his aides du camp were helpfully renaming all of Ronny's staff to help him remember what they did. Can't remember the specifics but along the lines of calling the secretary Larry Types and the Bodyguards Larry Protects etc. I do remember Nancy being rechristend Larry Wife though. |
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| Pyriform
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| 177864. Fri May 25, 2007 6:59 am |
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| Long Haired Hippy wrote: | Reminds me of the Spitting Image sketch regarding Larry Speakes.
He was Ranald Regan's spokesperson and his aides du camp were helpfully renaming all of Ronny's staff to help him remember what they did. Can't remember the specifics but along the lines of calling the secretary Larry Types and the Bodyguards Larry Protects etc. I do remember Nancy being rechristend Larry Wife though. |
I thought he decided to call all his family Nancy, so his wife would be Nancy Wife, his daughter Nancy Girl and his son ... |
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| Sergei
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| 178001. Fri May 25, 2007 1:41 pm |
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| Gaazy wrote: | For the second half of the 1970s, the Topper comic's front-page strip was called 'Danny's Tranny', and had to do with a magic portable radio:
| Quote: | Danny's transistor radio doesn't operate like a normal radio. At the touch of one of its buttons, it fires out a beam of light and anything caught in that beam is transformed - the LW button causes things to grow, the SW button causes them to shrink, the MW makes them lighter than air, and the VHF renders them invisible.
All the effects last only a few seconds, a minute at most, and no harm comes to the objects transformed (at least not from the transformation itself).
Danny is sufficiently skilled with the radio's beam to affect only parts of an object or person, and can either make them increase uniformly in all dimensions, or simply stretch to enormous lengths.
Danny hails from the 1970's, an earlier age where a "tranny" was a kind of radio and had no other possible meanings. |
(from http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/d/danytran.htm) |
I remember that strip. Now I wonder, what on earth was a VHF button doing on a radio. Was it an older term for FM? |
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| Celebaelin
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| Sergei
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| 178139. Sat May 26, 2007 6:44 am |
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I know that! But the term - and the waveband - is usually associated with TV broadcasting.
And I know FM radio is broadcast in the VHF waveband. But was there, back then, radio broadcast in the VHF waveband that was still Amplitude Modulated and not Frequency Modulated? Or was VHF radio in the '70s just what we now call FM radio? |
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| Long Haired Hippy
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| 178951. Wed May 30, 2007 3:58 am |
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| Sergei wrote: | I know that! But the term - and the waveband - is usually associated with TV broadcasting.
And I know FM radio is broadcast in the VHF waveband. But was there, back then, radio broadcast in the VHF waveband that was still Amplitude Modulated and not Frequency Modulated? Or was VHF radio in the '70s just what we now call FM radio? |
The Button Formerly marked as VHF did indeed allow the transistor radio of yore to pick up FM transmissions in the VHF frequency band. The other two possible settings Medium Wave and Long Wave were used for picking up AM transmissions. |
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