The folks at Metafilter have discovered the Utah Baby Namer, which was like the second website I ever visited. It puts even this list of NFL athlete* names to shame:
Hello, my name is... [metafilter]
D'Brickashaw Ferguson
Laveranues Coles
God Shammgod (funny from beginning to end)
Speedy Claxton (not his real first name but, like Smush Parker, it's listed as his first name in media guides and stuff)
Jeremetrius Butler
Wonderful Monds
Dontarrious Thomas
Peerless Price
Zeron Flemister
Odartey Blankson
Earthwind MorelandThere are so many more. The NFL is a gold mine for completely ridiculous names that would doom people to a lifetime of embarassment if they weren't making millions of dollars a year as pro athletes.
Utah Baby Namer [wesclark.com, no, not that one]
Related [and not fake]: PEACHES GELDOF CALLS FOR END TO SILLY NAMES [contactmusic via mefi]
Previous UBN mention
[update: clearly, I cut-and-pasted poorly. I missed the MeFite's description of this as a list of athlete names and only quoted him as talking about NFL. In fact, everyone in the NFL has a wonderful name. Except, of course, for Wonderful, who is not a football player.]
You have to love Touraj (TJ) Houshmandzadeh. My guess is that he was 12 before he figured out how to spell it.
I have two new favorites from this year. Jerome From Southeast DC and the best name ever for an NFL Player:
Sheriff Gonna Getcha
If only the Redskins could have made it to the SB it would have led to the greatest media day ever. Long live Clinton Portis.
For those that don't live in DC, for most of the season, Clinton Portis, the starting tailback for the Redskins, would show up to his weekly press conference dressed up as a new character with a new personality, and it got stranger every week. Words can't describe how fantastic these were.
At the university I work at we had a football player on the team lat year named Lucius Pusey.
Just try to say it without sounding like Inspector Clouseau at a whore house.
Just to be nit-picky -- wasn't (isn't) God Shammgod a basketball player? The NFL, because of its larger team size, would seem to be more fertile ground for crazy names. But surely the NBA has some other than Mr. Shammgod. Of course, I can't think of any right now . . . .
Yes, the good Mr. Shammgod is indeed a basketball player, as is Mr. Claxton.
In the further interest of accuracy, D'Brickashaw isn't in the NFL, yet. And he doesn't even have the best likely-first-round-draftee name, which in my opinion goes to Ashton Youboty. It wasn't even his parents choice, there's nothing he could do about it. (Well, I guess they refrained from naming him Cover, Isee or Hanzon.)
[oy. this is the last time I blindly cutnpaste from those knownothings at metafilter. Well, until next time, anyway. -ed.]
And Speedy Claxton is an NBAer.
You missed my favorite - Plaxico Burress. Sounds like a pharmaceutical company or something.
And Wonderful Monds was a baseball player. his middle name (seriously) is "Terrific."
Why can no one remember the legendary X-Ray Hipp? BB player at Maryland. He was like 6-8 and 170 lbs -- as wide as an XRay.