Boaty McBoatface

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Martha. Hi, Grant. This is Eric from Orlando, Florida.

Hi, Eric. How are you doing? What’s up?

Recently, after all the stories we were hearing about Bodie McBoatface,

About the sort of joke construct of name McName, like Bodie McBoatface or Jokey McLaughlin,

Or even in Denver now they’ve got a goose on the city county building that they’ve named Goosey McGooseface.

And I was wondering where that construct came from and why that became the popular construct and not something like Bodie Vaughn Boatface.

Bodie Vaughn Boatface.

So Bodie McBoatface, just for anyone who hasn’t been keeping up with the goofball world known as the Internet, was the name chosen by the Internet at large for a research vessel in the United Kingdom, right?

They put a survey online, and as people tend to do, they gamed that sucker as much as they could.

Yeah, never have a naming contest online, right?

No, no.

That’s a bad, bad idea.

But the names usually are really funny and worth a laugh.

I think Sir David Attenborough is a really great name for a research vessel.

I’m hoping what he’ll do at the ceremony where they officially name the boat that he’ll say,

I actually like the other name more.

A lot of linguists and lexicographers and people who follow language have really been looking into this, Eric,

And have spent a lot of time, a lot of fun time looking into this for like the last 10 years

Because this trend has been going on for a kind of peaked a couple of years ago.

And we’ve got evidence of it happening at least for the last 20 years.

And our colleague, Ben Zimmer, who writes a language column for The Wall Street Journal, among many other things, has told me on Twitter that he has some evidence from 1987 of people saying things like Hickey McHicks from Hicksville, from Cheers.

We have this thing with the Mc prefix in English, particularly American English, where we attach it to words to kind of suggest that they are typical of their kind.

That they’re like a, when you say Martha McRadio, then you’re saying, well, she’s kind of like the typical awesome public radio host, right?

Martha McNerd is what I would say.

Martha McNerd, sure.

And this goes back to the 1940s.

We’ve also used the Mc prefix to mock, and as we move into the modern day from the 1940s,

More and more it’s used in script writing for shows like Friends,

Where you use it to kind of tease somebody or to make a gag or make a joke.

Or Grey’s Anatomy, Patrick Dempsey’s character, McDreamy.

Right. Well, one of the things that McDreamy is missing, though, is the reduplication.

And the reduplication is the repeating of the syllables here, the Mc, Mc, Mc, right?

Yeah, but you don’t need it because he’s so dreamy.

Yeah.

So on Friends, the Cutie McPretty from 2000 was one.

And then there’s another variant that doesn’t really use the mick at all, but it still has the reduplication.

That’s Helperton from Ace Ventura, When Nature Calls, in 1995.

And there’s a ton of these.

And they all have this context of a little bit of humor, a little bit of teasing, not too serious.

Sometimes it’s self-deprecating and suggesting that someone is very much like the personification of the words involved in that invented name.

Yeah, the quintessential, yeah.

Is that all ring a bell?

It does. It certainly helps.

Well, we hope we’ve been Helpy Helpertons.

You’ve been Awesome McAwesome.

And not Dopey McDopertons.

Sketchy McSketcherton.

Oh, there’s a ton of these, right?

Yeah.

Thanks, Eric.

Sure, thank you.

Okay, bye.

All right, bye-bye.

Bye.

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