Whos On First / Real Life

Who's on First? in real life.

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• Hu, Watt(s), Ware, Nguyen^note pronounced similarly to "When", and Howe are reasonably common surnames. Hence the well-known joke about the legal firm Dewey, Cheatem and Howe.
• In 2002, Hu Jintao became president of China. A few months later, Wen Jiabao was named premier.
  • This video is another homage to the original Abbott and Costello sketch, features a George W. Bush who is confused by the names of various world leaders, Hu Jintao among them.
  • Ian McMillan did a similar routine on Have I Got News for You when Hu and Wen made a state visit to the UK, including using "Hu Jintao" as a vague homophone for "Who's In Town?"
  • There was a gift card with George W. Bush and Condoleeza Rice.
    Bush: Who is the Premier of China?
    Rice: Hu.
    Bush: Who is the leader of North Korea?
    Rice: Il.^note This is inaccurate; Kim Jong Il's name was in Eastern order.
    Bush: I know, he's sick today.
• In 1964, when Murray Gell-Mann announced his theory of quarks, a journalist reportedly asked him whether science was ever gonna find the "smallest", truly elementary pieces of matter, to which he famously replied "Who knows?" The urban legend among scientists has it that the journalist misinterpreted the statement, and since a Chinese researcher by the name Hu was present at the announcement, he wrote down that "Prof. Hu knows".
• This qdb quote features some confusion over the World Health Organization's acronym.
  • This site and Bash.org both also house a repository of such confusion over Windows Millennium Edition, which sucked.
    A truly astounding number of people: [Subject] sucks worse than ME!
  • Bash.org also has this shining example of this trope.
  • This quote, also on qdb.us: "watt" <-> what.
    • This was used in the movie Clue. Professor Plum worked at the United Nations Organization's World Health Organization or UNO WHO.
• We also have Nowhere, Alaska. For when you really want to get to the middle of Nowhere.
• When a Michigander or a Norwegian tells you to "go to Hell," he might just be giving you directions. And given the northerly location of both towns, "Hell freezes over" several times a year.
• No, Hu is on second! (though he inspired an I Always Wanted to Say That)
  • I thought Watt was on second?
• There is a lawyer named Sue Yoo◊.
• There are various places named Ware, including three in England alone. When mentioned to someone unfamiliar with the area, or who believes themselves to be funny, the conversation will almost invariably go this way.
• There's Wye, which can have the eyerollingly amusing joke of:
  Two men meet on a train.
  Person #1: Where are you going?
  Person #2: Wye.
  Person #1: I was just making conversation!
• Suffolk and Kent both have a Hoo.
• There's a village in Derbyshire where some resident has to have made a joke about living in Hope.
• On the west coast of Scotland is the Isle of Ewe. Reading a map for one's partner can result in a uniquely heartwarming kind of frustration.
• One of Bill Clinton's campaign slogans in 1992 was "The Man from Hope", as in Hope, Arkansas. (He also gave a speech about still believing in a place called Hope at the Democratic Convention that year.)
• Conversation during a game of Battleship:
  "I-1"
  "No you didn't, I still have three ships!"
• Slogan of a popular Hawaii-based Asian seasoning company: "Say Yes to Noh"
  • Additionally, "Noh" isn't that rare Korean surname. Just ask president Noh^note Also Romanized as "Roh".
    • No, you mean Korean Pop Music Idol Singer? The answer is "yes".
• Semi-example. In a programme by Jeremy Clarkson of Top Gear fame about future technologies, he said that a new advanced robot had been built by "Doctor Who. No, really." Cut to a Chinese robotics scientist named Dr. Hu...
• Most of the stages and tents at the Bonnaroo Festival are deliberately given theme names that would make for confusing conversation among festival-goers: Which Stage, What Stage, This Tent, That Tent, The Other Tent, etc..
• In Burmese, "U" (pronounced like "oo" in "food") is a male honorific roughly equivalent to "Mr." or "Uncle," included in the names of men with relatively senior positions but no higher titles. This has led to some amusing prominent Burmese names:
  • U Saw, Prime Minister of British-ruled Burma from 1940 to 1942.
  • U Nu, head of state of Burma from 1948 to 1958.
  • U Thant. (Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1961 to 1971)
• In October of 1998, an E-commerce software company named itself Accompany. You can guess the rest.
• There's an Urban Legend among biologists about a genus of insect which the original discoverers wanted to give the scientific name I. Their peer-reviewers made them name it Iii instead, as they didn't want there to be scientific papers containing sentences like "I have small genitalia."
• In the great majority of British Columbia, Canada's westernmost province, most of the rest of the country's population centres are best reached by way of the Trans-Canada Highway, which passes through a town called Hope. If the Federal government is held in especially low regard, you can bank on "<x> is beyond Hope" shirts and stickers popping up, X being just about about any population centre outside of BC.
• Ehara Yukiko, a Japanese actress who goes by the stage name of You. We're. Dead. Serious.
  • "Yu" and "Ai" are both common Japanese first names, and pronounced pretty close to the English pronouns "you" and "I".
  • Indeed, it is now grammatically correct to say Yu is on the mound.
• There's a bar in Burlington, Vermont, named The Other Place. Most people avert this trope by referring to it as "The OP", but it's still frequent fodder for jokes and honest confusion.
• There's a pub in Brussels, Belgium called "The Office".
  • There is also a bar in Los Angeles, California, called "La Oficina" (Spanish for "The Office"). Presumably, these establishments allow visitors to conveniently tell their family that they're "going to the Office" to go drinking.
• There's a pub in Columbus Ohio, right outside Ohio State University, called "The Library".
  • A pub in downtown Gainesville, Florida (about 3/4 of a mile east of the University of Florida) which has undergone many name changes over the years was also known as "The Library" around the mid-2000s.
• There is also a disco in Eichstätt, Germany, the name of which translates to "that (thing) there".
• There's a small deli in Oklahoma City called "Someplace Else".
• Anyone new to any given console-based video game has suffered a dialogue that goes something like this:
  "How do you...?"
  "Y"
  "Because I don't know what button does it"
  "I just said; you press Y!"
• When Nintendo announced that the enhanced version of their Nintendo 3DS would be called the "New 3DS", the gaming world erupted with jokes about the confusion this might cause, especially if you asked at a gaming shop for a "used New 3DS".
• Try saying the phrase in a foreign language for "I don't know" and watch this erupt.
  • In a similar vein, this exchange from the French version of bash.org (in French) has one person asking what is the translation for the English word "What". The conversation goes on the lines of: "What, it means what?" "Yes." "What means yes?" "No."
• There's an apocryphal story about world famous alpine skier Picabo Street (pronounced just as in "peek-a-boo") getting a job in a hospital Intensive Care Unit after she retired from skiing. The story goes that she's forbidden from answering the phone, because the hospital's standard phone greeting of "<name>, <department>" would require her to answer the phone with "Picabo, I.C.U."
• In March 2018, a lower-league English footballer named Sanchez Watt made the headlines after he was booked during a match. The referee repeatedly asked for his name, Watt repeatedly replied "Watt", and the referee mistook it for dissent and sent Watt off. He quickly reversed that decision once Watt's captain explained that that really was his name.
• At the 2012 Discworld Convention, the Maskerade competition included Pam Gower as What, the Djelibeybian Sky Goddess. Her introduction by Pat Harkin was played for maximum confusion.
• Raymond Chen, in a blog article on The Old New Thing, points out the issues caused by a team at Microsoft with the nickname YOU.
• In 1939, King George VI and his wife Queen Elizabeth (a.k.a. in later life as the Queen Mother) were visiting Canada on a Royal Tour. On a stop in Winnipeg, they were greeted by the Canadian Prime Minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King, and the Mayor of Winnipeg, John Queen, as well as Mrs. Queen (King was alas a lifelong bachelor). Needless to say, with the radio announcer talking about the King, the Queen, King, Queen, and Mrs. Queen, things got slightly confused. Excerpts from an unofficial transcript (no known recording survives):
  "Here comes the Royal Family now. The automobile has stopped. Oh, there's the King. He's stepping out, followed by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, nattily attired in a silver coat. Mr. King is now shaking hands with the King and introducing Mr. Queen to the King and Queen and then Mrs. Queen to the Queen and King."
  "They are now proceeding up the steps to the well-decorated City Hall, the King and Mr. King together with the Queen being escorted by Mrs. Queen. The King has now stopped and said something to Mrs. Queen and goes to Mrs. Queen and the Queen and Mr. King and the Queen laughed jovially.
  "And now the King and Mr. Queen and the Queen and Mr. King are moving into the reception hall. And now the King and Mr. Quing, I mean, Mr. Keen and the Quing. I'm sorry. I mean... oh s—."
• An oft-cited story tells of beloved British cricket commentator Brian Johnston supposedly informing radio listeners to a Test match at The Oval in 1976 that Michael Holding of the West Indies was batting and Peter Willey of England was bowling to him — with the immortal line "The batsman's Holding the bowler's Willey." Alas, all indications from those present at the time are that the line is almost certainly apocryphal.
• In Cincinnati, Ohio (and some other surrounding areas), it's fairly common to say "Please?" instead of "Huh?" or "What did you say?". This can cause problems for people who aren't from Cinci.
• A Russian variant found on the other wiki, involving similarity of pronunciation between Russian swear words and the word for "socialism" in Chinese.
• On this very wiki, North Koreans have Nodongs.
• A fake news story, which was famously picked up and reported as real by KTVU News had an Asiana Airlines plane crash reported with pilot and crew member names "Sum Ting Wong"^note "Something's wrong" "Wi Tu Lo"^note "We're too low" "Ho Lee Fuk"^note "Holy fuck!" and "Bang Ding Ow". South Korea responded with a fake news story about an American airplane accident involving pilot "Kent Parker Wright" and similar puns.
• The hacking technique known as SQL injection uses this. The bad guy enters SQL commands (along with some escape characters) into an online form that would normally contain other data for the SQL-driven back-end to receive. If precautions aren't taken, the back-end will interpret the input as a legitimate SQL command and alter, delete, or return normally inaccessible data.
• There have been racehorses with names like "This Horse Here", "That Horse There", "The Other Horse", and "A Horse Withnoname".
• Do not be alarmed when traveling to Vanuatu, if the words "Mystery Island" appear on your itinerary. This is the actual name of the island (although to avoid precisely this sort of confusion, it is often referred to as "Inyeug", the name given to it by the local indigenes).
• Two major streets in Sacramento, California are named Howe and Watt, which has led to decades of these kind of jokes from locals and visitors.
• There is a home improvement store based in Chicago literally called Empire Today. So if you're calling them, you'll be calling Empire Today regardless of whether it's actually today or tomorrow.
• Actress Bai Ling's family name is pronounced "Bi", and she is in fact bisexual.
• In a 2021 episode of The Ingraham Angle, contributor Raymond Arroyo tried to talk about the Netflix series You, confusing Laura Ingraham. (Arrayo later said that the exchange was scripted.)
  Arroyo: You know, I was watching an episode of You, where measles came up...
  Ingraham: Wait, wait, wait, when did I mention measles?
  Arroyo: I don't know. It was on You.
  Ingraham: What was on me? What are you talking about? I never had the measles.
  Arroyo: The measles and the vaccine episode was on You.
  Ingraham: We never did - we never did a measles and vaccine episode. Is this a joke?
  Arroyo: I know! It was on You! It was on You!
  Ingraham: I've never had - Raymond, I've never had measles. What are you talking about? It's stupid.
  Arroyo: It was an episode of a show, Laura.
  Ingraham: What's it called?
  Arroyo: You! You! It's called You!
  Ingraham: I've never done a show on measles I- I just completely give up. I give up!
  Arroyo: It's a show called You on Netflix!
  Ingraham: There's a show called Laura Ingraham on Netflix?
  Arroyo: Never mind. I'm moving on to Adele. I can't explain this to you.
• A common name for a town next to a city is having the same name plus the direction.
  • East Cleveland, the east side of Cleveland or the suburban town just east of Cleveland.
  • East Chicago is either the Lake Michigan coast of Chicago, or the small Indiana town just east and south of Chicago. At least they're in different states. There is also a West Chicago but it is rather far from the city. Similarly, Chicago Heights, Chicago Ridge, and North Chicago are not actually in the city itself (though the latter is, at least, to the north).
  • East St Louis is an Illinois city across the river from the Missouri city. Similarly East Dubuque is the Illinois town across the river from the Iowa city.
• This restaurant has such kid's menu items as "I'm not hungry", "I don't know", and "I don't want that".

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