I was really proud that I was named after Thomas Edison and wanted to be called Edson. I thought Pele sounded horrible. It was a rubbish name. Edson sounded so much more serious and important.

This 'Whoa, Nellie!' thing is overrated. There were all kinds of stories going around. People said I had a mule in Georgia named Nellie. Well, we had a mule in Georgia, but her name was Pearl.

I named him Todd Chavez after a guy I went to middle school with, whose last name was Chavez and who I always liked. He had a good energy, and something about his spirit felt Todd-appropriate.

I signed with Big Yellow Dog and have been with them for years. The president of the company is a woman named Carla Wallace, who is an amazing publisher who just has a knack for female artists.

When I was younger, I thought LisaRaye sounded so country, but I've come to really appreciate my family-given name. I was named after my father, David Ray McCoy, and I'm totally a daddy's girl.

My background was always more soulful pop. I was named after Ella Fitzgerald, and when I was a kid, I was listening to Lauryn Hill, Etta James, Joss Stone. For me, it was always about the voice.

Martin Luther King didn't know he was going to have a day named after him; Muhammad Ali didn't know he was going to be the people's champion. He was doing what he was doing because it was right.

A border collie named Orson inspired me to buy a 110-acre farm with four barns and a sheep. That led to a series of books about Bedlam Farm and about dogs, rural life, lambing and herding sheep.

The Sherry Theater, which I named after my mom, is a place I can go. I do want to give back to the community. There are so many people out there who want to be seen and heard, and get connected.

I've made no secret of the fact that I often wear wigs and have in fact launched my own 'Dynasty' range, named after various characters. I find this saves a ton of time - as well as my own hair.

I do have a ski lift named after me in Sweden... It's an honour. I got to smash a bottle against the first pillar and say, 'I name this chairlift James Blunt. God bless her and all who rides me.'

History shows that it is incredibly tough for a defender to be named Footballer of the Year because over the course of a year there is normally always a forward who steals the headlines up front.

A guy named Peter Rabe wrote a batch of books for Gold Medal in the '50s, and he was absolutely the single largest influence on writing style. I was completely in love with the way the man wrote.

I have some role models. In Brazil, they are mostly writers. A writer named Afonso Henriques de Lima Barreto is my favorite. Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis is also a very important figure for me.

'Get Out,' of course, is the surprise hit movie that Peele wrote and directed about a black man named Chris, who discovers that his white girlfriend's family is running a nasty racist conspiracy.

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.

I started my career at General Electric in a small office under a guy named Greg Liemandt, and his direct boss was Jack Welch. I would say those two have had the most profound impact on my career.

I have a Husky named Blu. One would think, given his country of origin, that he would love a cold water bath, but he is a third generation Husky who has quite adjusted to the climate in Bengaluru.

I think my first client other than my brother was this kid named Tallent. I was charging him eight dollars an hour to record in my room. He kept coming back, then I went up to ten dollars an hour.

My mother named me after her favorite actor, Joel McCrea, and dressed and presented me as her avatar. I'm sure she wanted to be a performer, but when that was impossible, I was her next best shot.

When you imagine the Koch brothers, it's hard not to think of the 1983 film 'Trading Places,' which featured as its villains a pair of brothers, commodity brokers named Randolph and Mortimer Duke.

I think I jumped the gun a bit on head coaching. I got named a head coach at 23, and I really didn't know what I was doing. I remember getting that job and going, 'Oh my God, they gave me the job.'

I literally went down to my car and thought, 'Oh my God, SAP bought Concur - maybe tomorrow they'll buy Dairy Queen.' It was the best thing that happened to me on the day I was named CEO of Oracle.

I went to work with a guy named Matt Fuller, who was a Mothers fan, and low and behold, Arthur was working for him also. We worked together for about six months and decided to strike out on our own.

Being the keynote speaker at the convention this year is an honor I don't take lightly. I know I've got some big shoes to fill. Two conventions ago, the keynote speaker was a guy named Barack Obama.

My name was originally John Collins, but I just didn't think it had the flair I needed. I found out the poet laureate of Poland was named Krasinski and so it seemed like a shoe-in for show business.

My mother saw a movie when she was 14 years old. I forget the name of the movie, but one of the lead characters was named Lark. She decided then she would name me and she stuck to it, and here I am.

I have an African gray parrot; her name is Eli. We thought she was a boy. And a blue-streaked lory named Marco. He's 10. And a yellow and green parakeet, Petey. He's very cute, but he's getting old.

Imagine the world of mobile based on Nokia and Motorola if Apple had not been restarted by a missionary entrepreneur named Steve Jobs who cared more for his vision than being tactical and financial.

I respect everyone, from the homeless brother and sister on the street to the executive that sits in the highest office named President Barack Obama. I respect everyone - but we over-respect no one.

It had not yet been named Silicon Valley, but you had the defense industry, you had Hewlett-Packard. But you also had the counter-culture, the Bay Area. That entire brew came together in Steve Jobs.

Most of the wrestling happens in the South, so I had to ask myself how I was going to be received as a Jewish boy named Goldberg. Then again, I have never, nor would I ever, hide my Jewish identity.

My mom, God rest her soul - she liked nicknames. In the womb she named me Skip. There was another black guy in Piedmont, W.Va., and his name was Skip. They called him Big Skip, and I was Little Skip.

Enron Field in Houston, the Trans World Dome in St. Louis and PSINet Stadium in Baltimore are just three of the modern-day coliseums named for companies that have found new homes in bankruptcy court.

If I'm the promoter and I've got a fighter named 'Rampage' who likes to slam people and knock them out, the last thing I would do is put him in a fight with someone who's good at holding people down.

I learned Hebrew from a high school teacher named Mr. Cohen. We would drive down the highway to meet his car, and Jewish boys from these Massachusetts towns would sit in his car and learn the lessons.

I'm named after a horse. My mom's best friend had a horse named Brooke, so my dad suggested 'Brooklyn' as a more formal version, and it just stuck - and now I live in Brooklyn part-time, so go figure.

Disco is the first technology music. And what I mean is that 'disco' music is named after discs, because when technology grew to where they didn't need a band in the clubs, the DJ played it on a disc.

My friends have named me the person they least want to do extreme adventures with, because I always seem to be very close to being part of a disaster. If a cat has nine lives, I think I've used a few.

I joined an improv comedy group. Ours was named 'Quick Fire!' with an exclamation point. It was when I auditioned for that team and got on it and felt like... I'll just say I felt like I was good at it.

One of my little girls is named Reagan. Her first words were, 'Mr. Larry, tear down this crib.' That was her first words, it was very sweet. My first words were, 'Are you going to finish that sandwich?'

First time that I cried at a work of art was at a drum solo that I saw. A drummer named Winard Harper, part of the Billy Taylor Trio, gave back in - I would have been in high school - 2005 or something.

Writer's block has probably existed since the invention of writing, but the term itself was first introduced into the academic literature in the nineteen-forties, by a psychiatrist named Edmund Bergler.

The Small Business Lending Fund was cleverly named by its authors last Congress. Since its implementation, however, it would appear a more appropriate name would be the Bailed Out Bank Refinancing Fund.

That's where this exciting bundle of energy and joy named Johnny Olson made his entrance and ultimately did the announcing. I had never seen anything like what I was involved in for the next 15 minutes!

An editor named Kerrie Hughes wanted me to write a short story that brought my fire-spider Smudge from my goblin books into the present-day world. I came up with libriomancy as a way to make that happen.

She raised me to not think of men and women as different. She raised me without gender. It's kind of the reason she named me Billie. It's not about being a strong woman - it's about being a strong person.

Middle-class Pakistani cultural life is what I've seen, what I know - they're not all screaming faceless mullahs. It's disturbing that in American films, the character on the other side is not even named.

There was a band in Australia named Midnight Oil, and they were a very, very political, and they literally hit you over the head with a hammer. U2 sometimes can hit you over the head with a rubber hammer.

I named myself Flash many years ago, as I loved the cartoon. Then my own fans said that I should call myself 'Grandmaster,' because of the way I operate turntables. I put the two together and that was it.

Share This Page