We have a winner in the Worst Bad Name Contest. And after talking to the woman who has this name, I’m happy to report we have new anecdotal evidence to go with the psychological studies supporting the Boy Named Sue theory: good things can indeed come from a bad name.It wasn’t easy picking a winner from more than 1,000 entries. Besides Charman Toilette, an early favorite of the judges, there was Chastity Beltz, Wrigley Fields, Justin Credible, Tiny Bimbo, and a girl whose father was an auto mechanic but somehow didn’t realize he was effectively giving her the name of a tire: Michele Lynn. There were girls named Chaos and Tutu, and boys named Clever, Cowboy, Crash, Felony, Furious and Zero. There was Unnamed Jones (pronounced you-NAH-med). There was Brook Traut and his daughter, Rainbow. There were more names involving genitalia than the judges cared to count. (Memo to parents: Carefully consider your surname before naming a boy Harry or Richard.)The grand prize, a copy of “Bad Baby Names,” by Michael Sherrod and Matthew Rayback, goes to Kate, a Lab reader who nominated a fellow resident of the Cleveland area: Iona Knipl. The judges chose it because, in addition to being an embarrassing pun, it also set up an inevitable reply from people imagining they were being wittily original. I called up Miss Knipl and asked her how many times she had heard someone meet her and reply, “I own two.”
