WHAT’S IN A NAME?
Odd book titles and embarrassing Russian villages
TITLE FIGHT WINNER
While the IgNobel Prize rewards the eccentric and unusual in the field of science (see FT438:15 for the latest winners), the Diagram Prize for the oddest book title of the year does the same for the arts. Conceived in 1978 by Bruce Robinson and Trevor Bounford to stave off boredom while working at the annual Frankfurt Book Fair, it is awarded every year by
The Bookseller magazine. The competition is organised by the magazine’s diarist, Horace Bent, and is now awarded by public vote on their website; any titles that appear deliberately created to be funny are rejected. The first winner was Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice and other winners have included
Highlights in the History of Concrete, which won in 1994, and Designing High Performance Stiffened Structures from 2000. Other notable winners have been Is Superman Circumcised? (about the Jewish origins of the superhero), How to Avoid Huge Ships, Too Naked For the Nazis and Cooking with Poo (by Thai chef Saiyuud Diwong who is nicknamed “Poo”). There is no prize for the winning author, beyond increased visibility for their book, but the person who nominated it wins a bottle of claret or champagne.
This year, Danger Sound Klaxon! The Horn That Changed History by Matthew F Jordan, which investigates the history of the klaxon car horn, triumphed, gaining 53 per cent of the public vote and easily outstripping the bookie’s favourite “I Fart in your General Direction!”: Flatulence in Popular Culture. The other 2023 contenders were The Queerness of Water: Troubled Ecologies in the Eighteenth Century, The 12 Days of Christmas: The Outlaw Carol that Wouldn’t Die, Dry Humping: A Guide to Dating, Relating and Hooking Up Without the Booze and Backvalley Ferrets: A Rewilding of the Colorado Plateau. Published by University of Virginia Press, Danger Sound Klaxon! makes it the third year in the row that an academic publisher from the American south has won the prize. “Maybe the most interesting thing for this year is that Dixieland has suddenly and head-scratchingly become the Diagram stronghold,” said Tom Tivnan, managing editor at The Bookseller.
When FT’s Paul Sieveking worked at the British Library as a cataloguer he compiled a list of Diagram-worthy titles that he found there, published in an early issue of the magazine, which contributed to the increased visibility of the 1918 pamphlet Hand Grenade Throwing as a College Sport by Lewis Omer. For previous prize winners, see FT289:9, 302:9, 317:9, 328:12, 416:8. theguardian. com, 8 Dec 2023.
NAME GAME
Australia has strict rules about names children can be given, banning those that are “offensive and not in the public interest, more than 50 characters, include symbols, or an official title or rank such as princess, Queen, or goddess”. To challenge this, journalist Kirsten Drysdale tried naming her daughter “Methamphetamine Rules”, expecting it to be banned, but due to a bureaucratic oversight it “slipped through” and is now the girl’s official name, although Drysdale is expected to apply to have it changed immediately. boingboing.net, 20 Sept 2023.
NAME SHAME
Legislation has been introduced to the Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, to allow local authorities to rename villages with embarrassing names, such as Shalava (Slut), Lokh (Loser), Bukhalova (Boozy), Musorka (rubbish skip) and Pukovo (Farty). Duma vice-speaker Vitaly Davnkov explained “Nobody wants an insulting word on their children’s passport”. Meanwhile, in the UK, much hilarity ensued when Worcestershire County Council posted a notice warning people of imminent bush trimming in Minge Lane, Upton-UponSevern. Times, 10 Oct; D.Star,
4 Oct 2023.