I see that Joslyn Tinkle is still playing basketball for Stanford. She's a senior now, and one of their stars. Two years ago I opened a post by mentioning that there was a Stanford player whose last name is Tinkle, but I decided not to comment further, despite how much I like to deal with unusual names. All right, all right, yes, I admit it -- I like to make fun of people's funny names.
Thinking about Ms. Tinkle immediately put me in mind of a man I used to know whose last name was Outhouse. Now somebody with a surname like Knez cannot help but understand that people take pride in their family history and the good name of their forebears, but seriously -- wouldn't you be tempted to do something about it if your last name was Outhouse?
A simple solution, which would detract little from the familial and ethnic heritage of the name, would be to add an N to the end. Outhousen looks much better in print, and it could be pronounced Oot-hoosen.
He stuck with Outhouse, however, and when he married, his wife -- and who can blame her? -- refused to take his name and kept her own, which was Lipschitz.
Really. I am not making this up.
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