“We want a story that starts out with an earthquake and works its way up to a climax.”

Samuel Goldwyn, American Movie Mogul

“A name is a mirror to catch the soul of a thing.”

Susan Brind Morrow, American Author

“I am thankful that my name is obnoxious to no pun.”

William Shenstone, English Poet and Landscape Architect

“It’s nice to have a nickname like Willy: one doesn’t have to grow up.”

William A. Fowler, American Astrophysicist

“Some to the fascination of a name,
Surrender judgment hoodwink’d.”

Williaim Cowper, English Poet

“A thousand names are toss’d into the crowd;
Some whisper’d softly, and some twang’d aloud.”

William Cowper, English Poet

“I decided that I would be one of the biggest new names; and I actually had some little fancy business cards printed up to announce it, ‘Count Basie. Beware, the Count is Here.’”

William James “Count” Basie, American Musician

“Oh, I’ll tell you their names, but you know it seems to me they give these ball players now-a-days very peculiar names.”

William Alexander “Bud” Abbott, American Comedian

“I shall write a book some day about the appropriateness of names. Geoffrey Chaucer has a ribald ring, as is proper and correct, and Alexander Pope was inevitably Alexander Pope. Colley Cibber was a silly little man without much elegance and Shelley was very Percy and very Bysshe.”

James Joyce, Irish Poet

“In real life, unlike in Shakespeare, the sweetness of the rose depends upon the name it bears. Things are not only what they are. They are, in very important respects, what they seem to be.”

Hubert H. Humphrey, American Vice President