"Silly Name" Winner Doesn't Float my Boat - Bote Boats? BOO!

One reward for getting past the idiocy of "March Madness," is the April insanity of the "Silly Name" contest.

Instead of ruminating on the Elite Eight or Final Four among glandular college freaks running around in their underwear dribbling a ball, people choose a selection of people with bizarre names.

The voting was close in many cases...

Ultimately, the boring and redundant BOTE BOATS of South Africa won.

He has yet to respond to the contest by declaring his delight, or answering charges that his real first name isn't BOTE.

The contest organizers do confess that the choice hasn't met with universal glee:

"Did Botes Boats really deserve to cruise past Eliza Fox Teats, Bird Lovegod, Aphrodite Bodycomb, Quindarious Monday, and Andy Brandy Casagrande IV? Was YourMajesty Lumpkins the right pick over Tutz Honeychurch, Guy Hands, H. King Buttermore III, Kobe Buffalmeat, and Marmaduke Trebilcock? In many of those cases, much of the High Committee would agree the answer is no."

Collecting funny names has long been a hobby for some people, and you could probably go back many decades to read articles listing "unusual but true" lists of monickers. I clipped an article about an eccentric collector, circa the 60's, and the header was "It all began with Olney Nicewonger." The guy clipped that name and began to assemble a 3x5 card collection.

John Train assembled a few cute little books loaded with names, along with fanciful illustrations of what the people might look like. I was rather proud to give that author a bit of trivia he didn't know about: that "John Train" was the name that Phil Ochs once used, in creating a new identity for himself.

If YOU want to join the hobbyists, the Internet does make it pretty easy. You can go to phone book databases and type in odd words and see if somebody has a name to go with it. But beware, some people deliberately register their phone under a weird name just to get around the high cost of an unlisted number. A more authentic way of amassing names is to go to a social security death index.

There you'll find that Cordelia Mae Dust bit the dust, Ima Smelly is now rotting, Arthur Gravy is in his grave, and Violet Boner is now bones.