I went to the William Penn Charter School in Philadelphia, where I had a teacher really named Edward Shakespeare. He was a very influential figure in my childhood – I acted in high school a few times, but Mr. Shakespeare got me to lead in ‘The Crucible.’ I played John Proctor.
I have an older sister named Haley and she wanted to be an actress. So I wanted to be an actress. It’s really funny the way that some people don’t give kids enough credit for like really being driven, and really wanting to do things so badly.
I actually named myself Redfoo because I want a name that describes my energy. Red stands for passion. Foo stands for foolishness and having fun. It’s passionate foolishness.
Back in the fifties (the nineteen fifties, not the eighteen fifties) I did some writing for Mad Magazine, along with my friend Ernie Kovaks and a pair of comics named Bob and Ray.
My mother, twenty-two, was Harriet Gautier Brooks, named for her paternal grandmother, but always called Hallie. My father, twenty-six, was Albert Horton Foote, named for his father and great-grandfather, and I was named Albert Horton Foote, Jr.
I hired a guy named David Sze to do consumer investing at Greylock. And he went on to invest in Facebook and LinkedIn. So I guess I did something right.
The only person I look up to – and not just in show business but also in the world – is a little lady named Judge Judy! Honestly.
Once, while shooting in Pune, I decided to experiment and ordered an item named Shepherd’s Pie. I thoroughly relished it, only to be later informed that what I had was beef. I couldn’t sleep that night! My only consolation was that the cow was English, not Indian!
We had a cat in college named Chloe, and it was the most evil, awful cat in the world… When we left, we used to close the door, and its paw would come underneath and try to paw us.
Whoever named it necking was a poor judge of anatomy.
There’s a roller derby girl that goes by that name, ‘Nerd Rage,’ and she named herself after my album.
My favorite song will always be ‘Layla’ by Derek and the Dominos, because my granddaughter was named after it.
Since I was as young as I can remember, my dolls became my babies. I still have my teddy bear from childhood that I named Mama Bear because, actually, I wanted to be the mama.
This is how a revolution begins. It begins when someone grows tired of standing idly by, waiting for history’s arc to bend toward justice, and instead decides to give it a swift shove. It begins when a black seamstress named Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat on a bus to a white man in the segregated South.
One of the best ones out there was a guy named Howard Cosell. He was the best.
My parents were no ordinary people. My mother turned Gandhian, and my father was a staunch communist. They named me after the great saint as a symbol of communal harmony.
I have a new show now called ‘The Bridge,’ where I play a guy who’s a real-life guy. My character’s based on the life of a guy named Craig Bromell who was a cop for 12 years and then became head of the police association, so basically the president of the union for 85,000 cops.
My mother named me for Marty Robbins.
I have a rescue dog named Fideo, which means ‘noodle’ in Spanish, and a cat named Hutch.
My favorite electric guitar would have to be my Duesenberg. I’ve named her ‘Dolores,’ and she sings like an operatic menace.
I have a Guinness Book of World Records entry as the most-watched person on television; now I have a new entry as the only man who has a crab named after him.
Like its breakfast companion Marmite, jam seems to divide the crowds. In many of its mass-produced guises, it seems barely acquainted with the fruit named on the jar, tasting mostly of sugar.
Scientists have egos, and scientists like to name dinosaurs. They like to name anything. Everybody likes to have their own animal that they named.
I have a cat named Dandelion.
My stepmother Angela is an Italian from New York City. I based Rhoda on her and a Jewish friend named Penny Ann Green. People often said that Rhoda seemed to be Italian. That was the Angela seeping through.
While novels are fiction, mine are usually very close to my heart. Like my other books, ‘The Lemon Orchard’ is inspired by something I care about. I care so deeply. The stories are my dreams, and I want to do a lot of research. Roberto is based on a real live friend of mine named Armando who worked in my garden.
If I had not played basketball and made the millions of dollars that I had made, I would never have been able to build a hospital in Congo. It started in 1997, and 10 years later I was able to unveil the Biamba Marie Mutombo Hospital, named after my mother, in my hometown outside of Kinshasa. It was such a blessing.
In the early ’50s, my great-grandmother and grandfather raised a baby gorilla named Bobo who wore clothes and played with the neighborhood kids.
Adele was introduced to me by a guitarist named Mike Hartnett that plays for a band called Rehab. We was just riding around, and he was like, ‘Man have you heard this soul singer Adele?’ and I was like ‘Nah!’ and we just rode to the whole CD, and it got to ‘Hometown Glory,’ and I was like, ‘Man I have to sample that!’
It’s only the losers named ‘Dave’ that think having an unusual name is bad, and who cares what they think? They’re named ‘Dave.’
When it comes to the periodic table, the United States really blew its chance to make a name for itself. If you look over a map of all the elements named for cities, states, countries, and continents, it’s not surprising that European locales dominate the map.
I never hated my father. I would have named my child Usher regardless. I never hated myself because I carried his name, because I made it mean what I wanted it to mean.
My brother nurtured the love of stand-up comedy in a skinny little black kid named Tony.
In seventh grade, with some vague sense that I wanted to be a writer, I crouched in the junior high school library stacks to see where my novels would eventually be filed. It was right after someone named Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. So I grabbed a Vonnegut book, ‘Breakfast of Champions’ and immediately fell in love.
It was a great feeling to be named an All-Star starter, to know that my hard work is paying off and fans around the world are recognizing that.
I was very young, and I remember this heated, passionate argument and trying to figure out some place called Vietnam, something called a Watergate, and some guy named Gerald Ford who my dad knew who had just become president, and how all these things fit together.
I was named after my paternal grandmother, my dadi. She died before I was born, which is why my parents named me Amy.
I changed high schools three times because my parents moved. I had one friend my freshman year named Miki Vukovich. Miki and I were the only skaters in our high school. He runs my foundation now.
When I was a kid, I had a rag doll named Lucy, whom I took everywhere with me. I lost her when I was 12.
I was named after my mother. And I guess when I started making records, Madonna Ciccone seemed too long and complicated, and I just got stuck with Madonna.
I don’t cook. I think they named the ‘Mike’-rowave after me.
I have a pet lizard named Puff, five goldfish – named Pinky, Brain, Jowels, Pearl and Sandy, an oscar fish named Chef, two pacus, an albino African frog named Whitey, a bonsai tree, four Venus flytraps, a fruit fly farm and sea monkeys.
‘Nimona’ was originally a vague idea I had when I was in high school, when I was just getting into shapeshifting characters. It was a straightforward superhero story at the time. Nimona was named Nightshade, and she had an eyepatch for some reason. There was nothing really special about it, though.
You know, people think I named myself Meat Loaf, even though I didn’t. And they think anyone who would name himself Meat Loaf couldn’t have an IQ higher than four.
Taylor was named after James Taylor and claims that she knows all the James Taylor songs, and I’m a huge fan of James Taylor and know all his songs, too. My dad told me that if I ever met Taylor Swift, I had to tell her that I know every James Taylor song. We started naming albums, and we were both shouting them out.
For me, my ‘X’ replaced the white slave master name of ‘Little’ which some blue-eyed devil named Little had imposed on my parental forebears.
When I named it ‘Girl Problems,’ I knew I would be inviting some interesting questions and some funny questions, but that was the cool part about it – I wanted that.
There’s a very famous South African playwright named Athol Fugard, and I’d be in any play he’s ever did.
My nickname is Mishti… I am named after mishti doi!
Foot-binding is said to have been inspired by a tenth-century court dancer named Yao Niang who bound her feet into the shape of a new moon. She entranced Emperor Li Yu by dancing on her toes inside a six-foot golden lotus festooned with ribbons and precious stones.
I was taught Shakespeare brilliantly by an eccentric genius at Harrow named Jeremy Lemmon who made me want to be a writer.
I’m in the theater because of two plays: ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ and ‘Death of a Salesman.’
I used to interact with the fellow prisoners during recreation activity; I used to conduct an interactive session that we named ‘Rajpal Ki Paathshala.’
I do believe in the idea of a historic person named Jesus that was a kind of chill dude who was just telling people to chill and be nice to each other. And he got penalized for that.
