Grant – I’m surprised at you! Aptronyms are an awful lot like puns, you know!
(My Dad used to say, “Puns are the lowest form of wit. Or, for some people, wit-out!”)

This kind of book title / author pun pairing has a name. It’s published in the “think&grin” jokes pages in Boys’ Life magazine, published by the Boy Scouts of America for nearly a century. It’s one of the five standard joke types used in think&grin – 14 occurrences this month alone, and is known as “A book never written”. I’d guess it goes back at least to the mid-twentieth century.

Examples from the Dec. ’08 edition:
A book never written: “A Scout Is Thrifty” by Xavier Allowance.
A book never written: “Building Snowmen” by I.C. Fingers.
A book never written: “None Taken” by Noah Fence.

The other standard think&grin joke types are Tom Swifties, Daffynitions, the Warped Wiseman, and the three-liners. Examples of all of these types can be seen at boyslife.org.

(Boys receive a patch and a new Handbook or Fieldbook when their joke is published.)

Finally, while writing this, my son (on the adjacent computer) was playing Halo online, and there’s another related category of pun names – the character name chosen in online games. In Halo, the payoff is when you kill another player, and it says: “You were killed by _____.” Popular names are A Vehicle (matches the message you get when you are run over by an unoccupied vehicle), Yo Mama (always popular), an Internet Glitch, a Random Event, etc.

A realty company of over fifty years in business with "Robcon "as their name.I do not think they have a clue.

Two peerless Chinese writers and language gurus:
1.林語堂 (YuTang Lin):A hall of words/languages
2.錢锺书 (ZhongShu Qian):fall in love with books

At the end of the NPR program "Car Talk", the guys usually read a few of their own "aptonyms" as credits. Their list is available at http://www.cartalk.com/content…..edits.html.

I remember a wonderful book I came across years ago entitled "Remarkable Names of Real People". Sorry I don't have the author's name handy. A few of my favorites;

Aristotle Tottle *a feeble little pirate*
Shanda Lear *a daughter of the family that owns Lear Jets*
Cummins & Goins *a law firm*

And I leave you with a local one for the francophiles in the forum. I have no idea what to call a cross-linguistic pun, but a local baker who studied as a pastry chef in france opened up a local bakery called 'Blue Lawn Chair'.

Post edited 9:41AM – May-01-10 by David Hoffman

An absolutely true story: my Middle School Home Economics teacher was named Mrs. House. She flunked me for not paying attention during sewing.

And where would you put things like the closing strains of "The Car Guys" radio show? Statician Marge N OfError, Chauffer Pickup Andropov, etc. My personal favorite is Chairman Mao's brother, Stickout TseTung.

Phil said:

I remember a wonderful …;
Shanda Lear *a daughter of the family that owns Lear Jets*

Lear is the name of the guy that started the company. Like Ford is the last name of Henry Ford, who started Ford. I don't see what is so remarkable. Or am I missing somthing?

dhenderson said:

Lee said:

Ima and Ura Hogg were always among my favorites.

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Ima Hogg was a very real person, quite important in the history of Houston.

My favorite of the aptronymous book titles is "Stains on the Bedsheet, by Mister Completely."

Oh, yes – Train's assertion was that all the names were real and documented. It appears that he was wrong about Ura Hogg, however (at least according to the Wiki article you quoted).