Name Shame

The concept of nominative antideterminism, or when your name goes against everything that you represent, whether intentionally or not. Cecil Fielder, sadly, wasn't a great fielder.Today in Tedium: If I lived my life in a nominatively deterministic way, I would be a Muppet blacksmith. But unfortunately, I live in the real world, and my lot in life has put me on newsletter-writing duty. So I don’t quite live up to my name. But lots of other folks don’t, either. Recently, though, I had a bit of a thought monster: What about people or things whose lives have more or less completely gone against what their names suggest they should? I’ve seen a couple of names for this, but I’m going with nominative antideterminism, the idea that not everyone needs to live up to the lot in life they’ve been given on the surface. And the guy that got me thinking about it? A famous baseball player who definitely did not live up to his last name—and his son arguably didn’t, either. Today’s Tedium ponders the…