A news story about the Ho-Hum Bandit has Grant musing about the odd names that law enforcement officers give to criminals at large, usually based on their appearance or behavior, like the Barefoot Bandit, the Mummy Bandit. Or how about the Bad Breath Bandit? This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Descriptive Criminal Names”
You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Martha Barnette.
And I’m Grant Barrett.
A story in the San Diego Union-Tribune caught my eye. It was about the ho-hum bandit. Did you see that, Martha?
Ho-hum bandit.
The ho-hum bandit. The FBI called him that because his demeanor is considered plain and unassuming. They don’t know his name, so of course they need a shorthand, right? Something memorable?
The feds in particular are partial to putting bandit in there somewhere. They come up with a lot of other names for these guys and these gals. Most of the names have something to do with appearance or behavior. But, you know, some of these guys get off a lot easier than others.
Yeah.
You want to hear some of these?
Sure.
Yeah.
Now, this is the police and the feds who come up with this rather than the media.
Right.
It’s not the media usually. It’s the feds, the police. Because, look, they’ve got this guy. They probably have him on film. He’s been robbing a bank, right? They have a face but no name. So they need some way, some shorthand to identify this guy. And that way when they talk to the press, they say, yeah, we’ve caught the ho-hum bandit, right?
Okay.
So one thing that really interested me when I got to digging in this was that there are a lot of these guys and gals that go by the same name. There are a lot of Botox bandits, for example.
What?
A lot of women, yeah, who’ve gotten some kind of cosmetic surgery and then skedaddled. They refused to pay. They got it under an assumed name or they faked the credit report or whatever it was. One of the weirdest ones that I heard, just because it doesn’t even roll off the tongue or even sound that memorable, was the average at best bandit.
What?
Yeah. How disappointed that guy must be, right? C plus. The average at best. That’s no good.
And then there’s a guy in Michigan. They called him the bad breath bandit. Apparently that was his distinctive characteristic, right?
Oh. Look, if you’re robbing banks, take a mint. Something else, right? And there’s tons of ordinary ones like Barefoot Bandit and Fedora Bandit and the Mummy Bandit. This guy went in all bandaged up. I mean, it’s one way to hide your face.
Well, that explains the Fedora Bandit too, right? He wears this big hat so there’s a shadow over his face and it’s harder to make out who he is on the cameras. Anyway, this stuff was really fun. Notice, though, that none of these guys are called genius.
Right. Stupid crook tricks. Stupid crook names. Have you heard a good one along these lines lately? Let us know and call us if you’d like to talk about anything related to words and language. 1-877-929-9673.
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