On the eve of the Academy Awards, one of our favorite bloggers, Abby Sandel, creator of the always informative appellationmountain.net, has searched through the annals of Oscar history and come up with some great lists of award-worthy male winners’ names.
Many of today’s most popular names conjure up Hollywood at its most glamorous, especially for girls. I’ve met plenty of toddlers named Audrey, Ava and Natalie. But ever since Kevin Nealon called his son Gable–as in Clark–I’ve been wondering about screen legend names for boys.
Here’s a short list culled from Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor nominees and winners, and the characters they played, from the 1920s through today.
LEADING MEN
Some of these are household names, while others are more obscure. A few have surprising roots–Denzel, for example, can be found in use in Medieval England. But all share a certain dashing quality.
ALEC
ANTHONY
CLARK
COOPER
DENHOLM
DENZEL
DJIMON
EMIL (Emil Jannings won the very first Best Actor award in the 1920s.
FOREST
GABLE
GEORGE
GREGORY
HEATH
HOLDEN
KENNETH
JAVIER
JOAQUIN
JUDE
LEONARDO
LIAM
LIONEL
MARCH (Fredric March was a successful actor from the 1920s to the 40s)
NICHOLSON
OLIVIER
OMAR
REX
RIVER
SPENCER
VIGGO
WILLEM
CHARACTERS
Fagin, Hannibal and a few other obvious bad guys aren’t on this list, but be warned–not every character is a saint. The most surprising Oscar-worthy appellation? The homespun Homer led to nominations for at least four different actors over the years.
ATTICUS (The literary powerhouse To Kill a Mockingbird was also a big screen success, with Gregory Peck playing Atticus Finch.
CHANCE (From 1979’s Being There.)
COLE (Haley Joel Osment’s psychic grade-schooler in The Sixth Sense.)
COSMO (Roland Young played Cosmo in 1937’s Topper.)
DJAY (Terrence Howard’s character in 2005’s Hustle and Flow.)
ELLIOT (Richard Dreyfus played Elliot in 1977’s The Goodbye Girl.)
EZRA (Both Gregory Peck and Laurence Olivier have played Ezras.
GARRETT (Jack Nicholson”s role in 1983’s Terms of Endearment.)
GOWAN (Tom Conti’s role in 1983’s Reuben, Reuben.)
HOMER (A Hollywood favorite through the ages–Mickey Rooney played a Homer in 1942; 1946’s The Best Years of Our Lives included a Homer, Sidney Poitier won the Oscar for his Homer in Lillies of the Field and Melvyn Douglas played a Homer in Hud.)
JETT (James Dean was nominated posthumously for his performance as Jett in Giant.)
JUDAH (Charleton Heston nabbed the statue playing Judah Ben-Hur in 1959.)
JULES (Samuel L. Jackson’s Pulp Fiction role.)
LASZLO (Ralph Fiennes played Laszlo in The English Patient.)
MACAULEY (James Stewart’s Oscar-winning character in The Philadelphia Story> was Macauley Conner; however, Macauley answered to Mike.
MILO (Michael Caine’s character from 1972’s Sleuth.)
NIKONAR (Christopher Walken’s character from 1978’s The Deer Hunter
OTTO (Kevin Kline’s character in A Fish Called Wanda.)
PETER (Clark Gable won his first Oscar playing Peter Warne in It Happened One Night.)
RAY (From the Ray Charles biopic.)
RUFUS (Burl Ives won for Best Supporting Actor as Rufus in 1958’s The Big Country.)
Tags: Academy Awards, Atticus Finch, best actor, best actors, best supporting actor, Clark Gable, James Dean, Oscars, To Kill a Mockingbird
This entry was posted on Friday, February 20th, 2009 at 2:17 am and is filed under baby names from movies, celebrity baby names, celebrity names, famous names, guest bloggers, name ideas, namesakes . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Was really disappointed, can you tell?
I have him in the middle: Linus Willem.
February 20th, 2009 at 10:34 am
Awesome Post! I’m a complete sucker for guys names that have a bit a flash on top of their substance. There’s a few of these on my lists: Willem (who gets no love, anywhere), Cosmo!, Rufus, Laszlo, Clark, George!, Rex! and Otto’s one I keep despite the fact I can’t use it.
I can hope a lot of these beyond Atticus start really coming back. Even Peter is starting to feel fresh again and I’ve never liked Peter.
Sometimes, for fun, I’ll go to IMDb and search character names, just to see what sort of things come up, Take Zed. He shows up in some pretty unlikely places: “Pulp Fiction”, “Men in Black”, “Californication, “The Year One” “Zardoz” and so on. How cool is “just” Zed?
Cosmo, also shows up in “Mile High”, “Bridget Jones’s Diary”, “Sneakers”, “Toast of the Town”, “Stormy Monday” “The Fugitive” and a good double handful of others. It’s a fun thing to do when things are slow.
Thanks for this! Somes I feel that boys names don’t get nearly the attention girls names do. That’s sad, I think. What, we’re creative with our girls but not our boys? Don’t they deserve the same energy & love we devote to our girls? I think so, keep ‘em coming!