Names as a comic device

Alan Partridge is a nice example of the comedy value of a character name – not so much his own name, but those of his children and grandchildren. His spoof chat shows on radio and television used an Abba song as the title (Knowing Me, Knowing You), Abba music provided the soundtrack and theme song, and his catchphrase was the familiar Abba lyric ‘Aha!’. So when we learn that his children are called Denise and Fernando (in that order for comic effect) the audience connects that revelation in their minds with Alan’s apparent Abba obsession, and it gets a huge laugh. More subtle is the ‘joke’ in the names of his grandkids, Jack and Ruby.

The Alan Partridge names require knowledge of their context and history to complete the joke. Some names are self-contained gags, such as Mike Hunt or Ben Dover. The cartoon series The Simpsons uses comic names as a running gag when Bart repeatedly calls Moe’s Tavern: Amanda Hugginkiss gets the laugh when Moe prefaces that name with ‘I want…’

Sometimes an author will use a comedic pseudonym to suit the tone of the book they have written. I once wrote a series of joke books with an adult theme, and used the made-up name Imah Goer to match what those books were about. Another invention was Horace Bunion, author of a humorous collection of annoying or unpleasant sounding words.

And let’s not forget the names of the two male leads in the classic 70s sitcom The Good Life. It was never made a thing of, and the names were rarely uttered in sequence, but after a few episodes it dawned on viewers that they were watching ‘Tom’ and ‘Jerry’. It was just a bit of fun from the scriptwriters, but it adds a nice layer to the comedy.