nn: Secret Identities
"'We name our fondlings in alphabetical order. The last was a S—Swubble, I named him. This was T—Twist, I named him. The next one as comes will be Unwin, and the next Vilkins. I have got names ready made to the end of the alphabet, and all the way through again when we come to Z.'
'Why, you're quite a literary character, sir!' said Mrs. Mann."
—Oliver Twist, ch. 2
In An Almanac of Words at Play, Willard Espy wrote: "Is Clare Boothe Luce? Does Saul Bellow? Can Alistair Cooke? Did Ezra Pound? Did Mary Garden? Did John Reed?" (p. 243; entry for 20 September.) Aaron Hertzmann independently came up with a similar game:
- What Stan wants, Stan Getz.
- Others are impatient, but Tom Waits.
- The hot sun makes David Byrne.
- How does Julian Cope?
Some of my own entries:
- Who did Al Gore?
- Is Noah Wylie?
- Who did Oliver Stone?
- Immanuel wishes he could, but Immanuel Kant.
- What is Stephen Hawking?
- Democrats make Dan Quayle.
- I think of Alice Liddell, but Sir Thomas More.
- At Christmas time, did Lewis Carroll?
- He's not supposed to look, but Samuel Pepys.
- Did Edward Lear?
- Did Alger Hiss?
If the above-named people got teased about their names, perhaps they would have preferred different ones. People sometimes aren't satisfied with the names they start out with. Adolf Hitler's father, for instance, was born Alois Schickelgruber, and only later (though still well before Adolf was born) changed his name to Hitler. Here's a quiz: a hodgepodge of sobriquets, epithets, nicknames, secret identities, and aliases. Match each original, birth, or "real" name on the left with a corresponding alias on the right. Some are real people, some are fictional; some are easy, some probably impossible.
| name | alias |
|---|---|
| Barry Allen Frederick Austerlitz Norma Jean Baker Israel Isidore Baline Lulumae Barnes Sir Percy Blakeney Charlotte Brontë Charles Carter Nicholas Coppola Lamont Cranston Dino Paul Crocetti Jack Dawkins Draupadi Amandine-Aurore-Lucie Dudevant William Claude Dukenfield Mary Ann Evans Tule Ellice Finklea Emmanuel Goldenberg Barbara Gordon Jean Grey Rodolfo A. R. P. P. Guglielmi Frances Ethel Gumm Carter Hall Edda van Heemstra Hepburn-Ruston Rosetta Jacobs Camille Javal Arthur Stanley Jefferson David Robert Jones Allen Stewart Konigsberg Lucille Vasconsellos Langhanke Archibald Alexander Leach Lucille Fay Le Sueur Joseph Levitch Louis Bert Lindley Jr. Ladislav Loewenstein Maurice Joseph Micklewhite Harris Glenn Milstead Marion Michael Morrison Nikolaus Gunther Nakszynski Brigid O'Shaughnessy Walter Palahnuik William Henry Pratt Diana Prince Steve Rogers Rosalind Cherilyn Sarkisian Roy Harold Scherer, Jr. Sofia Scicolone Alice B. Sheldon Jerry Silberman Gordon Matthew Sumner Simon Templar Susan Tomaling Viola |
Marilyn Monroe Jack Palance Susan Sarandon Divine Stan Laurel Artful Dodger Klaus Kinski Fred Astaire Piper Laurie George Sand Holly Golightly Miss Wonderly Wonder Woman Captain America The Scarlet Pimpernel Hawkman Mary Astor Joan Crawford Currer Bell Edward G. Robinson Cesario Peter Lorre Sairandhri Judy Garland Woody Allen Phoenix Slim Pickens Cher Sophia Loren Irving Berlin Brigitte Bardot Nicholas Cage Cyd Charisse Jerry Lewis Cary Grant Dean Martin Rock Hudson Batgirl The Saint Michael Caine Ganymede Gene Wilder Audrey Hepburn Charlton Heston Boris Karloff W.C. Fields Sting The Shadow James Tiptree, Jr. David Bowie The Flash Rudolph Valentino George Eliot John Wayne |
Answers are on a separate page. Rather than providing a separate individual answer for each name, I've just lumped them all together, so match as many as you can before peeking.