There are many people who have names which suit their occupations. Here is a short list I’ve found so far in 2021. There are others who have slipped by in the past but are unverifiable.
According to Frank Nuessel, in The Study of Names (1992), an aptonym is the term used for “people whose names and occupations or situations (e.g., workplace) have a close correspondence.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptronym)
Know of another? Leave the info in a comment! (Must be verifiable via a working URL.)
I wonder what we’d call a name that sounds like the exact opposite of someone’s occupation? An anti-aptonym?
Here’s the real-life example that has me pondering this question. Our former chief of police was named… Danielle Outlaw.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danielle_Outlaw
Just found “Met Éireann meteorologist Emer Flood, said: “We’re seeing another spell of cold weather this weekend as an arctic airmass re-establishes across the country through Friday …” at the Irish weather service web site.
Good one!
Not sure he qualifies as an apt-o-nym but:
Omar Hurricane is a physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, in the thermonuclear and inertial confinement fusion design division.
Wikipedia via IEEE Spectrum
My wife discovered Christopher “Chris” Landsea – from wikipedia:
Christopher William “Chris” Landsea is an American meteorologist, formerly a research meteorologist with the Hurricane Research Division of the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory at NOAA, and now the Science and Operations Officer at the National Hurricane Center. He is a member of the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society.
Why an aptonym? Hurricanes hit both land and sea – get it?
Do not forget: Angelo Codevilla, Whose Writings Anticipated Trumpism, Dies at 78 – Commonplaces
[…] might have to add Wyoming Senator Wallop to the post about aptonyms, as a hawk, wallop seems an apt […]
In an old New Yorker, in a story about the early days of the COVID Pandemic, a profile of Dr. Catherine (Cat) Lutz – who manages the Jackson Mouse Repository. She goes by ‘Cat’ making her a newly elected member of the aptonym club.
From Linkedin:
cat lutz
Senior Director, In Vivo Pharmacology and Mouse Resources at The Jackson Laboratory
Bar Harbor, Maine, United States
All you have to do is wait, the aptly named will come to you!