What's In a Name?

Over at the Washington Post, Monica Hesse looks at one of the obstacles to Fred Thompson's presidential aspirations - namely, his, um, name: (h/t Best of the Web)

In the swampy soup of hopefuls for the 2008 presidential election, there is a man with a funny name. (No, not that one.)

We're thinking of the one named Fred (Thompson).

Say it out loud. Do it. Fred. Fred. In the South, Fray-ud.

Fur-red-duh.

It has the tonal quality of something being dropped on the floor, something heavy and damp-ish.

Waterlogged paper towel.

Fred.

The phonetics of the name seem integral to its image problem: On Urbandictionary.com, a "Fred" is defined as "a person who does stupid, annoying, or idiotic things" (Fred Flintstone, Fred Mertz). The best-case descriptors a Fred can hope for are terms like well-intentioned, predictable, benign (Fred Rogers).

Clearly, Ms. Hesse is going for the funny here, but as James Taranto points out, she might have chosen a different source, or has she looked up Urbandictionary.com's definition of her first name lately? You can find it here.

With that in mind, I decided to look up other potential presidential first names: Rudy, Mitt, Hillary, and, of course, Obama.

You know, by this yardstick, that Rudy guy might have some potential.

You can look up your name here.