Amanda Hugankiss, and other terrible (wonderful?) Punny Names

August 25, 2017 2:55 PM

I overheard what sounded like a risqué punch line to a joke. So now I wonder... is there an actual joke whose punch line is "Sal Pinkingside"?

I realize the "joke" may be just in the crude punnyness of the name, but when I heard it delivered, and the resulting laugh from the listeners, I figured it must be the end of some joke. It reminds me of other punny, risqué names I've heard: "Sofonda Cox" and Bart Simpson's "Amanda Hugankiss", for example. Are these just standalone name-puns a la Car Talk, or are they punch lines to a bigger world of jokes I'm not privy to? What risqué name-puns do you know, especially ones that are punch lines with actual joke setups?

posted by Pig Tail Orchestra to Grab Bag (43 answers total)

This isn't risque, but my childhood dentist was named Dr. Toothaker.

Also not a joke. This was for real. I was bragging about the great name of my old dentist to someone I worked with back some years ago, and he said WHOA where did you grow up? I told him and he said he grew up in the neighboring town, and was good friends with one of Dr. Toothaker's sons.

He also happened to be close friends with the guy who, in high school, was consistently a dick to my now-ex-husband. So that made me like my coworker that much better.
posted by janey47 at 3:01 PM on August 25, 2017

Best answer: If this joke was told at a convention of classicists, gynaecologists or otolaryngologists, then it could have been a pun on "salpinx."
posted by Perodicticus potto at 3:20 PM on August 25, 2017

There's a whole genre of "imaginary books" that 11-year-olds have been sniggering about for generations: "Under the Bleachers" by Seymour Butts and "The Yellow River" by I. P. Dailey, that kind of thing.
posted by neroli at 3:22 PM on August 25, 2017 [1 favorite]

Not risque, but:

Somewhere out there, there is a Brazilian cognitive scientist whose name is Dr. Memória.

One of my medical school professors was named Dr. Diuguid (pronounced do-good). Great guy.
posted by basalganglia at 3:47 PM on August 25, 2017 [2 favorites]

I've seen plenty of chyron screencaps showing newscasters fooled by people commenting on local events, giving one of the following names:
- Mike Litoris
- Hugh Jass
- Heywood Jablomi
- Mike Hunt
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 3:52 PM on August 25, 2017 [2 favorites]

Speaking of Bart Simpson's "Amanda Hugankiss," there is a list of his prank calls to Moe's here. Man, Wikipedia has everything. Seymour Butz on this list is a classic, ha. But Oliver Klozoff and Mike Rotch are good ones.
posted by AppleTurnover at 3:53 PM on August 25, 2017 [3 favorites]

Best answer:

"Sofonda Cox"

Fonda Dicks was absolutely a real person. (She still is, but she married and took her husband's name, which I'm sure was a relief.) She was a high-school basketball star in Iowa in the early '70s.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 4:02 PM on August 25, 2017 [1 favorite]

Ben Dover is another classic.

Tangential to your question but high school yearbooks tend to have a lot of these in the index section. Daniels, Jack is probably the most common one, but there's a ton of imaginary Hunt, Mike's out there in the world too.
posted by kensington314 at 4:21 PM on August 25, 2017

Not risque, but according to Ann Landers, there were a couple of Hog (Hogg?) sisters in Texas named Ima and Ura (sp?).
posted by she's not there at 4:30 PM on August 25, 2017 [2 favorites]

Back in high school, the guys would write the following on a piece of paper and ask a freshman girl to read it out loud: "If you think Burt Reynolds is hairy, you should see Mike Hunt."

Also, other people who have had this textbook before you:
Ophelia Rass
Hugh Jayness
Dick Hurtz
Jack Mehoff
Anita Handjob
Ophelia Balzac
Phil Laischio
Hugh Jasperson
Mike Oxlong
Connie Lingus
Harry P. Ness
Betty Humpter
posted by NoraCharles at 4:32 PM on August 25, 2017 [2 favorites]

One for the "not a joke" file:
In my ex's group of friends, there were three roommates - Eileen, Neil, and Bob. Eileen had a crush on Ben Tober, but didn't pursue it because she didn't want to risk becoming Eileen Tober.
posted by Krawczak at 4:43 PM on August 25, 2017

Another not-risqué but real one: there used to be a high-ranking member of the Catholic Church, a gent named Cardinal Sin.
posted by easily confused at 4:45 PM on August 25, 2017

Best answer: From googling, there is apparently an old joke about the sexual appeal of non-white women, the idea being that it's "all pink on the inside". I'm guessing this was the gist of what you overheard. There doesn't seem to be a canonical form I can find, but here are a couple examples:

I have been told that the Egyptians are mad about pink flesh, hence the pimp at Port Said who offered his little daughter, crying 'all pink inside like English lady'. It was a very old joke, but he had not heard it, and it threw him into a silent convulsion of decorous laughter; tears poured out of him.

Laurence Durrell, The Avignon Quartet.

Zucker purchased a race horse to run in Saratoga Race Course. While that’s not entirely funny, what he did next is a story that needs to be logged in the comedy history books.

Zucker named the horse “All Pink” and when it came for race day, he specifically instructed the jockey not to run the race for a win. Rather he instructed the jockey to run the horse around the course as close to the inside rail as possible. He then gathered with his friends at the track. Once the race began, the announcer called the play-by-play listing off the positions of the horses running down the track.

It was this horse in the lead, that horse in second place, but regardless of the position of Zucker’s horse the announcer kept yelling that it was “All Pink on the inside.”

How the creators of Airplane! pulled off one of the funniest jokes we’ve ever heard
posted by rollick at 5:07 PM on August 25, 2017 [1 favorite]

My fifth grade teacher joked that in college his fraternity was I Felta Thi.
posted by ejs at 5:15 PM on August 25, 2017 [2 favorites]

Best answer: I saw that in a skit on Laugh In, so, coming up on 50 years ago now? I don't remember who the actresses were. White woman picks up a package of Black Power Soap, opens it up and exclaims, "Oh, it's pink on the inside." Black woman replies, "Well, don't noise it around, honey, but so am I." I was so young I didn't realize it was a lewd joke, I just thought, well of course she is.
posted by Bruce H. at 5:26 PM on August 25, 2017 [3 favorites]

I Felta Thi

Eta Byta Pi.
posted by Bruce H. at 5:28 PM on August 25, 2017 [1 favorite]

Hugh G. Rection
posted by Bruce H. at 5:30 PM on August 25, 2017

Best answer: I knew a guy whose last name was Sexhauer. Apparently the family joke was

Delivery person: [Reading name on parcel] Is there a Sexhauer here?
Receptionist: Shit, we don't even get ten minutes for coffee.

posted by nebulawindphone at 6:00 PM on August 25, 2017 [14 favorites]

Best answer: Take a trip to the Tube Bar.
posted by porn in the woods at 6:04 PM on August 25, 2017

British comedian Paul Garner did some really elaborate ones at Heathrow, asking for passengers "Markollig Jezvahted and Levdaroem Dabahzted" to be paged. The unsuspecting announcer shortly found herself intoning, "my colleague just farted and left the room, the bastard." Several of these were recorded and used on Chris Morris' radio show.
posted by kindall at 6:22 PM on August 25, 2017 [1 favorite]

I went to high school with a girl named Terra. Her mom got remarried and made her change her last name to Hyneman.

She had the paperwork filled out to change it the night before her 18th birthday.
posted by furnace.heart at 6:55 PM on August 25, 2017

My high school AP Lit teacher used to joke about a guy named Dick Banjo Donkers. Turns out he was real. Rest in Power, Dicky.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 7:15 PM on August 25, 2017 [1 favorite]

I actually went to high school with a smart guy named Michael Hunt. He did some highly advanced (for a high school senior) university work in biology and computer science so more than once people heard his name over the PA system at the beginning or end of the day.

". . .and would David Gallegos, Paul Simms, and Mike Hunt--" [pause]. . .[pause], "please come to the Dean's office after school."

Other more fictitious names:
Haywood Jablomi
Jack Meyhof
Phil McCracken
Thor Heinie (friends call him Big Red)
posted by Lord Fancy Pants at 8:24 PM on August 25, 2017 [1 favorite]

Benny Hill did a whole bit about an oblivious headmaster reading out a list of naughty student names. The only one I remember was Farr, Ted. Cheeky!
posted by Ursula Hitler at 10:12 PM on August 25, 2017

Also there is a long tradition of lewd pun drag queen names, but I'm blanking on any good ones.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 10:19 PM on August 25, 2017 [1 favorite]

In Austin in the 70s, a frat house had a phonebook listing for Henador Titzoff. And at the co-op I lived at, many magazines were subscribed to by various and sundry miscreants under the name Hugh Chardon.
posted by a humble nudibranch at 11:01 PM on August 25, 2017 [1 favorite]

I can prove that a teacher in my high school was named Mike Grafone, because he's in my yearbook. What I know but can't prove is that his wife's name was Meg.
posted by workerant at 11:08 PM on August 25, 2017 [1 favorite]

My childhood optometrist was Dr. Wink.
posted by mcbeth at 4:26 AM on August 26, 2017

The actor Rob Morrow, who was "Dr. Fleischmann" on Northern Exposure, has a daughter named "Tu".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:47 AM on August 26, 2017

Right after the Asiana Air crash at SFO in 2013, the initial pilots' names released were punny in a pretty great and simultaneously awful way. Without better context this isn't a particularly non-douchey joke for white Americans to make, but if you're in Hong Kong, there is the equivalent restaurant/bar in Central, which has a very straightfaced delivery.
posted by tapir-whorf at 6:29 AM on August 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

(Is the joke that this name sounds like "It's all pink inside"?)
posted by wenestvedt at 7:11 AM on August 26, 2017

Response by poster: (Is the joke that this name sounds like "It's all pink inside"?)

That's my take on it. And these are all great! The Zucker and Laugh In jokes are good, but still wondering if anyone knows full setups with punny, risqué names as the punch line.
posted by Pig Tail Orchestra at 7:54 AM on August 26, 2017

Back when I worked in funeral services, it was a completely standard thing to get a phone call from someone asking to speak to Myra Maines. This happened about four or five times a year, and at least once on Halloween. On the rare occasion it was someone being pranked, but usually it was someone trying to prank us. We always knew when it was someone trying to prank us. It wasn't the fact that you could initially hear giggling in the background when it was someone trying to prank us, it was that they didn't know what to do when we gently told them that they were being pranked; they always insisted it there had to be a real person named Myra and refused to get off the line.

Of course we had the full arrangements for the late Ms Maines posted up with all the real current service arrangements. Ms Maines' services were to be led by Pastor Weye, and her next of kin were her sister Beah Reeved and her brother, Barry M. Deep. The funeral director who was handling the arrangements was Rick - Rick Amortis. But we weren't allowed to give them the service details. This was one of the cases where arrangements were strictly private. All our calls were recorded so we were very kind and formal and no hint of a smile at our end.
posted by Jane the Brown at 8:14 AM on August 26, 2017 [4 favorites]

When I was a kid, there was a whole list of punny "books and authors" we'd recite back and forth to one another. The only one I remember off the top of my head is The Yellow River of Texas by I.P. Freely.
posted by Short Attention Sp at 9:05 AM on August 26, 2017

Only tangentially related, but I went to school with a guy named John Hancock. He had a heck of a time signing up for things sometimes.
posted by kindall at 10:38 AM on August 26, 2017

Not exactly what you are looking for, but my real-life childhood dentist was named Dr. Needleman and his partner in the practice, Dr. Hertzberg was my orthodontist. Yes, I believe they did play in a band together too, why do you ask?
posted by stagewhisper at 7:23 PM on August 26, 2017

An eye specialist I saw a few times was Dr Wong See ... and he was (is?) rather good at his job too!
posted by GeeEmm at 3:05 AM on August 27, 2017

My first dentist was Dr. Slaughter.
I still hate dentists
posted by Joseph Gurl at 5:01 PM on August 27, 2017

I think I made up one of these 20 yrs ago!! Asking for "Ms. Bea Verlicker" became a running joke and I've never seen it anywhere else!
posted by polly_dactyl at 8:43 AM on August 30, 2017

Response by poster: I don't know how I never knew of the Tube Bar pranks calls. Thanks all, for the great puns!
posted by Pig Tail Orchestra at 8:40 AM on September 3, 2017

The mohel who snipped both of our boys was Cantor Pesseroff. Seriously.
posted by Philbo at 12:37 PM on September 3, 2017

I swear I read this in Readers' Digest as a kid - it was presented as a true story, but now I'm starting to doubt. It was submitted by the assistant to the dean of an ornithology department at a small university; by coincidence, this dean was named "Dr. Byrd". Everyone thought that was a funny coincidence and remarked on it a lot. In addition, Dr. Byrd took up messing around in ultralight planes as a hobby, and would sometimes do that on his lunch break.

The assistant wrote in with the story of a phone conversation she had with a general member of the public, calling in with a question. "Yes, I had a question about how to move a nest in my back yard, is the dean of ornithology there?"

"No, Dr. Byrd isn't here right now - "

"....Wait, wait a minute, his name is actually 'Dr. Byrd'?"

"Yes."

"....You're shitting me, the dean of ornithology is seriously named Dr. Byrd?"

"Yes."

"....uh....okay. Is he in?"

"No, I'm sorry, he's out flying now."

".....your head of ornithology is named 'Dr. Byrd' and he's out flying right now."

"...Yes. Did you want to leave a message?"

"...Nah, forget it."
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:02 PM on September 3, 2017 [1 favorite]

Oh a joke? Here's one:

There's a new book out. Everybody's reading it. It's called "Fifty Miles to the Outhouse" by Willie Maket
Illustrated by Betty Wount
Maps done by Doris Lockt

It displaced last week's top book "Under the Bleachers" by Seymour Butts."
posted by Lord Fancy Pants at 11:49 AM on September 8, 2017