11/14/02’s illustrious band:

Squeegee Buffleheim

Brought to you by Squeegee him- or herself, a contributor to the Top 5 humor list I subscribe to.

Squeegee Buffleheim. How often do you hear a name like that? I’m assuming it’s a pseudonym, and I apologize for poking fun if it isn’t. But still. My guess is that the writer used one of those “find your soap diva/porn star name” formulae that instructs you to combine the name of your first pet with the name of the street on which you grew up in order to come up with a good stage name. This would make me Cuddles Lawrence. Not bad! Another option: Combine a pet’s name with your mother’s maiden name. Good thing I didn’t go with “combine your middle name with your current street name,” or I’d have a name with Avenue in it.

There are skillions of porn name generators on the ‘Net. Some provide a formula, as above. Others have you match the first letters of your real first and last names to a list and combine the names at the corresponding letters. I become Vanessa Spanky Spanky with one of these.

A more complex method of generation your soap opera name: Add your last name plus your brother’s middle name plus a popular talk show host’s wife’s maiden name. I’m not even going to attempt that one.

To find your Star Wars character name: For your SW first name, combine the first 3 letters of your real first name with the first 2 letters of your real last name; for your SW last name, add the first 2 letters of your mother’s maiden name to the first 3 letters of the city in which you were born.

Here’s my favorite name game, because it’s customizable. To find your superhero name: match your real first initial to the corresponding adjective on a list (supplied by the game’s author), and match your real last initial to a corresponding noun on the list. (I end up as Super Freak if I use my real name, Cat Runner if I go by Media Sensation.) Anybody who can think up 26 adjectives and 26 nouns can create his/her own name game. You might as well specialize the lists while you’re at it; use only cooking words to generate your Iron Chef name, or only crime words to create your mystery writer nom de plume. Create code names for your next children’s party by combining words like Squirky and Flufflebuns. Or whatever.

Caution: If you enter “find your porn star name” into an Internet search engine, or any phrase that includes the p-word, you will be offered links to XXX sites along with the harmless ones. Read URLs carefully and click at your own risk.

Yours truly,

Hopalong Nifflesqueak