Punny Name / Film

Punny Names in movies.

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Animated

• Cruella de Vil from 101 Dalmatians. Even disregarding the obvious puns on "cruel" and "devil", the name "de Vil" is a perfectly plausible Dutch surname — with the word "vil" being Dutch for "to skin [someone]".
• The An American Tail series, its title itself a pun, often gives its villains punny names. The first movie had Warren T. Rat, a play on the word "warranty", and the first sequel had a villain named Cat R. Waul, after the word "caterwaul".
• In The Boxtrolls, Milk Street turns into Curds Way.
• Plenty of the characters in Cars and Cars 2 have this, such as Jay Limo, Darryl Cartrip, Jeff Gorvette, David Hobbscap, and Brent Mustangburger.
  • Befitting its globetrotter plot, the sequel expands the puns to places and things, such as Petrodilly Circus in London, the Republic of Rearendia, and the Running of the Bulldozers in Pamplona.
  • Al Oft, the Lightyear blimp.
• Gru from Despicable Me speaks with a Russian accent. The GRU is one of Russia's intelligence services. When the girls find Gru's underground base, he admits that he's not a dentist, but instead a secret agent.
• Dr. Phillip Sherman, the dentist from Finding Nemo (also by Pixar) apparently has his name abbreviated as "P. Sherman." It's actually how the Filipinos pronounce the word "fisherman."
  • The name that the fish in his tank have for the aerator volcano that "spits" Nemo out of the tank: Mount Wannahockaluggie.
• Heavy Metal. A greedy character is named Hanover Fist ("hand over fist", as in "making money...").
• The Tae-Kwon-Dodos in the first Ice Age movie. The Shangri-Llama from Ice Age: Collision Course.
• The Incredibles:
  • Nomanisan Island is a play on the saying, "No man is an island," which means that people cannot live alone.
  • Also: The French terrorist, Bomb Voyage, a play on "Bon Voyage," (wishing someone safe travels). Rejected names for whom included Bomb Perignon (the champagne firm wouldn't allow it) and Sacre Blew.
  • The name "Thunderhead" is just two letters away from "Dunderhead", which suits its owner's low linguistic intelligence.
  • A meta-example, the "Incredits" track of The Incredibles soundtrack. A portmanteau of the movie's title, The Incredibles, and the word "End Credits", where the track is heard in the movie.
  • From the soundtrack, "Lithe or Death" when Helen has to use her powers to sneak into Syndrome's headquarters.
• From Incredibles 2, Evelyn Deavor, whose name is a pun of evil endeavor. It's a bit of an odd choice considering her villainy was meant to be a twist.
• Little Angels: The Brightest Christmas has Zeke Eaterman, the food-loving man who feeds Daniel.
• Most of Liz's therapists in My Depression have (usually medical) puns for names: Dr. Leth. R. Gee, Dr. H. Shrinker, Dr. Hed Hurtz, Dr. Oh My My, Dr. I.M. Fine, Dr. D. Mentia, Dr. How R. Yu, Dr. Mitch Shugena, and Dr. Perry Noya.
• The Nightmare Before Christmas gave us Jack Skellington. Skellington is also subtly playing with Species Surname, as there are some accents that pronounces "skeleton" as "skellington". See Hot Fuzz and Stardust for examples.
• Pinocchio has Jiminy Cricket (a phrase which previously was a euphemism for "Jesus Christ!", previously used in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs), John Worthington Foulfellow, and Monstro the (horrifying) Whale.
• Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: Dunk for Future features Mr. Al Cheapo, a chicken who constantly cuts down his employees' salaries when he sees them slacking off; he's likely named after the term "el cheapo".
• The magician's heroic rabbit of Pixar's five-minute short Presto (2008) is named Alec. His stage name? Alec Azam. Said magician is himself called Presto Digiotagione, a more obscure pun on 'prestidigitation,' another word for stage magic.
• Ratatouille has Remy's eventual human partner, Alfredo Linguini.
• In Turning Red, Stacy Frick is a minor character introduced via an interrupted Big "OMG!" and frick is a mild oath just like spelling out OMG as she does.
• The title character in WALL•E is both Meaningful and Punny; it was deliberately devised to sound like "Wally" (as evidenced by the shooting script, which can be downloaded from Pixar's site), and a "wally" is a foolish or naïve person.
• In Yellow Submarine, Ringo tells Old Fred he used to go out with Frankenstein's sister — Phyllis. (Being that Dr. Frankenstein's surname is one word — Frankenstein — the joke is only apparent if you treat it as two words: Dr. Frank Stein, and his sister Phyllis Stein.)

Live-Action

• In The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Robin Williams, playing the King of the Moon, is credited as "Ray D. Tutto", which sounds like the Italian for "king of everything."
• In The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle the titular pair are joined by FBI agent Karen Sympathy.
• In Back to School, the dean of Grand Lakes University is named David Martin.
• Angel and the Badman: Penny Worth? Seriously?
• Are You Being Served? is set on the Costa Plonka, which sounds like "plonker" - British slang for a stupid person.
• The Austin Powers series also parodies the James Bond Punny Names, in that odd tradition of parodying a joke. The women Austin is involved with have names like Ivana Humpalot, Alotta Fagina, Dixie Normous, Felicity Shagwell, and Robyn Swallows, maiden name Spitz ("Which is it, baby? Spitz or Swallows?"). This was also averted in the first film, where Austin's partner was Vanessa Kensington.
• Billy Club (2013): While Kyle is in the cemetery where Coach Fredericks' grave is, he comes across a headstone for a woman named Anita Mint.
• Carry On... Series:
  • Carry On Regardless: Aunt Acid (a play on "antacid") is the name given for Lucy Griffiths' character in the script.
  • Carry On Again Doctor:
    • Dr. Nookey, a slang word for sex. When he returns to Britain and opens a clinic with capital from Ellen Moore, the new institution is called the Moore-Nookey Clinic.
    • Mr. Bean, who's in for a kidney operation:
      Dr. Carver: Ah, this is the new kidney case, I suppose?
      Dr. Stoppidge: Oh yes, sir. Mr. Bean.
      Dr. Carver: Ah, Kidney Bean.
    • Goldie Locks being a play-on-words for Goldilocks.
    • Mrs. Moore is staying at the Berkeley Nursing Home, which shares part of its name with a British word meaning Country Matters.
    • Scrubba, which is not really a name that a woman would want to be called.
    • The script reveals that Elizabeth Knight's character is called Nurse Willing.
  • Carry On England:
    • Put together, the surnames of the characters played by Jack Douglas, Judy Geeson, and Patrick Mower are Ready, Willing, and Able.
      Captain Melly: Ready... Willing and Able. This is ridiculous.
    • Gunner Hiscock, with emphasis put where you'd expect it for a brief gag.
• Chitty Chitty Bang Bang has a character with the name of "Truly Scrumptious". In the stage adaptation, she has two sisters named "Madly Scrumptious" and "Deeply Scrumptious" and a brother named "Seriously Scrumptious".
• Cloverfield. As any First-Person Shooter fan knows, Hud stands for Head Up Display. This is also the name of the cameraman for most of the movie.
• Cool World mainly revolves around an overly sexified Femme Fatale toon named Holli Would.
• Roger Mortis of Dead Heat. Roger just happens to become a zombie during the course of the movie.
• Goldi Lox in Deadtime Stories, although Goldi is apparently a nickname and her actual first name is Golda.
• In Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome, several of the character initials combined with the last name are a play on words: Dr. L.E. Thal (Dr. Lethal), Professor I.M. Learned (Prof. I Am Learned), and Dr. A. Tomic (Dr. Atomic).
• Doctor in Trouble: When Disguised in Drag, Dr. Burke goes by "Lavinia", or "Lav" for short, which is amusing as it is also short for "lavatory" or "toilet".
• Dr. Strangelove is filled with them. There's General Jack D. Ripper, Soviet premier Dmitri Kissov and American soldier Bat Guano. Mandrake's name is also a reference to an aphrodisiac, one of many sexual innuendos scattered throughout.
  • Mandrake lampshades this by saying "Colonel Bat Guano, if that really is your name!"
• Jericho Cane is the name of Arnold Schwarzenegger's character in End of Days, though only using the Biblical angle — the movie also features a character named Christine York, "Christ In New York".
• Evan Almighty:
  • God, in the disguise of a waiter, has the name tag reading "Al Mighty".
  • A real estate agent is named "Eve Adams".
• Ashley and Ashlyn of Final Destination 3 are ones of the Foreshadowing kind seeing how they're both burned to death in malfunctioning tanning booths. In other words, they become ashes.
• The heroine of Foul Play is named Gloria Mundy, while the villain is Rumpelstiltskin, otherwise known as "the Dwarf".
• Glorious: The otherworldly deity in the bathroom stall is named Ghatanothoa, but he doesn't mind if you call him Ghat—which does sound pretty close to "God".
• 1974's The Groove Tube, a send-up of television, featured a news report about a Vietnam-esque region with cities like Suk Muk Dik and Phuh Qu.
• Hedwig and the Angry Inch: Possibly in a Shout-Out to Yellow Submarine, Hedwig's tour manager is Phyllis Stein.
• History of the World Part I's French Revolution segment has a greedy nobleman named Count De Monet... though everyone keeps pronouncing it as Count Da Money.
• Hobbs & Shaw had the titular duo head to another country despite being on international wanted lists. So, Shaw comes up with aliases for them. Unfortunately for Hobbs, the alias Shaw comes up with for him is Michael Oxmaul, who goes by "Mike". In the Stinger, Hobbs gets back at him by alerting the police to his location and giving his name as Hugh Janus (pronounced "jay-nus").
• The I Know What You Did Last Summer movies had a character called Will Benson, who near the end of the second movie reveals that he's the son of the killer...."Will, Ben's son!" he exclaims. Not only that, but the killer's full name is Ben Willis.
• Many of the girls in the earlier James Bond movies have names that are half punny name and half Double Entendre. Later ones sometimes continued the tradition through Lampshade Hanging.
  • The epitome was likely Pussy Galore of Goldfinger fame. Her name is Austin Powers level more than three decades early. The plot also had a non-female example in Auric Goldfinger — 'Au' is the chemical symbol for gold, so "Auric" can mean "golden".
    • Half credit for Goldfinger, as the name was actually chosen as a Take That! against architect Erno Goldfinger ^note Fleming despised Goldfinger's Brutalist style of architecture and named the villain after him. When the real Goldfinger protested and threatened to sue, Fleming said he'd gladly change the name to "Goldprick", after which the notoriously prickly Goldfinger decided to drop the objections.
  • Xenia Onatopp from GoldenEye is a more recent example. It gets even better in the German translation, where Onatopp sounds like "ohne Top" (without a top).
  • In Casino Royale (2006), this is briefly lampshaded. When opening an envelope containing his and the Bond Girl's assumed identities, he tells her that her last name is "Broadchest." She responds with an incredulous "It is not!" Casino Royale (both book and movie) also plays it straight with Vesper Lynd (West Berlin).
  • Lampshaded in Quantum of Solace, where a girl refuses to give Bond her full name, instead identifying herself as 'Fields, just Fields'. Later we find out that her reluctance was because her first name was 'Strawberry'.
  • The end of Skyfall reveals Judi Dench's M's real name after she dies following the climactic battle against Raoul Silva to be Olivia Mansfield, or "I live in a man's field" referencing the male-heavy nature of national intelligence.
• Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. Federal Wildlife Marshall Willenholly is a Shout-Out to the characters Marshall, Will and Holly on the children's TV show Land of the Lost (1974). And in a deleted scene, FBI agent Sidan Marty (Sid and Marty Krofft, who created that series).
• In The Kentucky Fried Movie segment "A Fist Full of Yen", two of Dr. Klahn's guards were named "Hung Well" and "Long Wang". (The third henchman is just named "Enormous Genitals").
• "Gay" Perry in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.
• In addition to the punny titles for Guru Pitka's self-help books, The Love Guru features several sex-suggestive and generally character-accurate punny names, including Guru Tugginmypudha, Coach Cherkoff, and Jacques Grande.
• John Oldman in The Man from Earth, because he is 14,000 years old.
• Hax Havoc of the action film Max Havoc: Curse of the Dragon.
• Monty Python's Life of Brian. Brian's Roman father was supposedly named Nortius Maximus (which sounds like "Naughtius Maximus"), and Pilate's friend is named Biggus Dickus (with a wife named Incontinentia Buttocks). Brian's first name is not a pun, but it satirizes the trend among Jewish-American families to give their sons old-fashioned English first names such as Irving, Sherman, and George in order to "fit in". (Many of these names almost immediately became stereotyped as "Jewish names".)
• Jock from Mortdecai's unspoken last name is Strapp.
• Not Okay: Danni has a pet guinea pig called Guinea Weasley, in a Shout-Out to Ginny Weasley from Harry Potter. At one point, she tells it to not look at her "like that".
• Jack B. Badd in Pitch Black She later changes it to Kyra.
• Princess Madam has two Action Girl leads named Mona and Lisa.
• In Reckless Kelly, the title character's love interest is a bank teller named Robin Banks. The pun gets explicitly pointed out when they first meet since he's committing bank robbery at the time.
• Dr. Frank N. Furter, of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The never-filmed sequel Revenge of the Old Queen also gave us Lord deLordy.
• The main characters of the cheesy sci-fi movie R.O.T.O.R. (featuring a Killer Robot antagonist) are named Coldyron ("cold iron") and Steele.
• The name of zom-rom-com Shaun of the Dead is a punning reference to one of the movies of which it is an Affectionate Parody, Dawn Of The Dead.
• Shredder Orpheus gives Orpheus's last name as Hellenbach, or "hell and back."
• Warren Peace from Sky High (2005), which is itself a pun. The creators also made Kim Possible, which also adores pun names. Makes even more sense knowing that his mom was a superhero and his dad was a supervillain.
• In Southland Tales, one of the principal characters is named Jericho Cane (a reference both Biblical and drug-related).
• Spaceballs has a character, specifically a parody of C3-PO, named Dot Matrix after a kind of printer. Other punny names include Lone Starr and Pizza the Hutt.
• Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams: The Mix-and-Match Critters are literal spider-monkeys and cat-fish. There's also a flying pig: it is a spork (stork-pork).
• During the hospital scene in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, you can briefly hear the intercom paging a Doctor Ben Dover.
• Star Wars: A minor character in The Force Awakens is named Ello Asty, as in the Beastie Boys album Hello Nasty.
• Tales from the Hood 2: Mr. Dumass Beach - the Robo Patriot even pronounces it as "Dumb Ass Bitch" at the end.
• In Tapeheads, Senator Norman Mart's wife is named Kay... making her Kay Mart.
• The Trouble with Angels: Mary's first idea for pranking the nuns has her and three other girls claiming fake names when they first arrive at St. Francis. While Mary opts for a celebrity alias (Kim Novak), the other three choose punny names: Fleur De Lis, Sandy Beach, and Pearl Ring. They manage to fool the nun who picks them up at the train station, but Mother Superior sees through it immediately.
• Up Pompeii films:
  • Up Pompeii:
    • Virginia, or "virgin".
    • Noxius, or "noxious" like toxic gas.
    • Prosperus Maximus' palace is on the corner of the veer Poofus.
      Lurcio: It's rather a queer street, that.
  • Up the Front:
    • Lurk, meaning to wait in ambush.
    • Captain Hamburger, also a popular lunchtime meal.
    • General Burke, or "berk", British slang for Country Matters.
    • Donner and Blitzen, two of Santa's reindeer.
• When W. C. Fields would direct a film, he used the alternate name Mahatma Kane Jeeves.
• In Who's That Girl, Nikki Finn admits Louden Trott into the hospital under the name Louden Clear.
• Young Frankenstein. Frederick sent Igor to fetch a brain for his monster. There was an accident, and...
  Frederick: Igor, would you mind telling me whose brain I did put in?
  Igor: And you won't be angry?
  Frederick: I will NOT be angry.
  Igor: Abby someone.
  Frederick: Abby someone. Abby who?
  Igor: Abby Normal.
  Frederick: Abby.. Normal.
  Igor: I'm almost sure that was the name.

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