What is it that make some names of places or people funny?

 

"He didn't get those in Berlin" just wouldn't be as funny. Partly it's the extra syllable in Heidelberg and partly it's the sound of "Heidel" to English ears.

And Accrington? It's wonderfully specific while being wholly irrelevant. So "My brother lives in Lancashire" wouldn't be as funny either.

Yes. I've been thinking about names and humour. 

In the last Lord Bonkers I had him and the Duke of Rutland falling out over "the ownership of certain Stilton mines outside Cropwell Bishop". Why Cropwell Bishop? Because it was the funniest name available.

You see, there are six commercial Stilton creameries: Long Clawson, Tuxford & Tebbut, Hartington Dairy, Websters, Colston Bassett and Cropwell Bishop. And there's not much comic potential in the first four names.

To me, Colston Bassett is a serious name that's trying to sound funny, and Cropwell Bishop is a funny name that's trying to sound serious. So Cropwell Bishop it was.

Just as a place name can be funny in the right context, so can a surname.

My first job after university was with a chess retailer and magazine publisher. The head of the packing department there was a working class man, without much education but with great intelligence. And he loved Fawlty Towers, and in particular Basil's despair at being unable to make Manuel understand him:

"It's not a proposition from Wittgenstein."

My colleague had no idea who Wittgenstein was, but that didn't matter because the name sounds so much like that of a gnomic Austrian philosopher. If Wittgenstein didn't exist we should have to invent him. 

And to finish, you can change the name of a thing or person to comic or subversive effect.

The owner of the company had written a book he called Easy Guide to Chess, but the packing department had another name for it. If one of them wanted a copy of the book to make up an order, he would call out to his oppo:

"Hardback Mein Kampf."