Year of Funny Names

Americans have historically elected men to the presidency who sport typical British Isle names, almost regal in resonance. Exceptions have been few.

Even with the sprinkling of Irishman, i.e., Buchanan, Kennedy, Reagan, the names were rather high-falutin', helping them to escape McDom. McKinley really sounds too monumental to qualify, and his family traced their origins from the regal MacDuff, Thane of Fife.

Many of our presidents have in fact drawn their lineage back to royalty on the Isles, no matter how many generations back.

Eisenhower might be considered the exception that proves the rule: a German who beat the Germans at war, elected from a nation whose backbone is largely German (20-25% of Americans consider themselves to be of German extraction).

So what to make of this year's crop of candidates?

In the Most Unlikely to Earn a Single Vote West of the Mississippi category, we must rank Mayor Rudy Giuliani highly. He's already a fast-talking New Yorker, did he have to have an "i" on the end of his name, too? Wasn't too long ago you had one of those (or an "a" or an "o") and you were considered a mobster. The fact that he fought Italian gangsters as prosecutor might just help, but don't bet on it.

Tom Tancredo might suffer the same fate as Giuliani at the ballot box, for he too is of Italian ancestry, but it doesn't look like he'll ever get there.

Two of the Republican candidates have perfectly normal-sounding names, except when you consider one is made up of two first names (Ron Paul) and the other two last names (Duncan Hunter).

Mitt Romney is a baseball name (no pun intended).

Taking a page out of McKinley's book, John McCain's "family roots in Europe are Scotch-Irish. His great-aunt was a descendant of Robert the Bruce, an early Scottish king." (so states his campaign website) That might be enough to get him by.

Just Fred Thompson on the Republican side has anything approaching a fully normal name. What a pity "Fred" as a first name has been so laden with loserdom of late.

The guy coming on right now from the right sounds like a character out of Mark Twain, but in the Year of Funny Names, Huckabee might just be electable (I certainly can't argue with his first name). Having a name that echoes and evokes the memory of an iconic American literary character, one that defines so much of the American experience, while living on the life force of the U.S.--the Mississippi River, the same one that made Huckleberry Finn a household name--may not be a bad thing, at least not in the Year of Funny Names. But it still sounds more like a vice president's name than one for the Commander in Chief.

As for the Democrats, overall they have a handful of more-or-less regular-sounding names: Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, Mike Gravel, Bill Richardson, with John Edwards taking the cake.

The weirdness begins with Dennis Kucinich. Even his campaign seems to recognize this with it's "Dennis for President" bumper stickers.

Hillary Rodham Clinton might sound all Waspish to the untrained ear. Clinton can be traced back to British royalty somewhere. But we must deal with "Hillary", the first women's name pretending to the throne, and one that hearkens back to a highly blue-blooded mountain climber. Then "Rodham". Of course it's a woman, and an avowed feminist at that, so we must suffer through that whole maiden name thing (even thought it's the last name that will get her elected, if at all, meaning she's reliant on her man--and his men).

The pinnacle of all unelectable weirdness comes next: Barack Hussein Obama. Need I say more?