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Comment by sleepyshift | Hacker News Reader

Is Google's head of payment systems really called "Bill Ready"?

Nintendo's CEO's last name is Bowser.

Our AG is named "Barr" (Pun on a Bar association)

Is there a cool collection of these somewhere? These are the only evidence I feel that we're in a simulation and the engineer is fucking with us.

There's a urologist in Austin, Texas named Richard Chopp.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptronym#Notable_examples

Incredible.

And Anthony Weiner, well...

The DHS secretary spokesperson with the entire Portland brouhaha is named Chad Wolf. If that wasn't a meme name I don't know what is.

Not spokesperson. Unconstitutionally appointed "Acting" Secretary of Homeland Security.

The most famous weatherman in Finland is Pekka Pouta, which literally means "Pekka Fairweather"

https://youtu.be/8sS7-CfPn6Q

I knew a gynecologist named Dr. Hole. To be fair there are at least three ironic specialties he could have gone into.

The COO of Starbucks has the last name Brewer

The Matrix is real.

I believe there was a man named Armond Hammer who was the CEO of the company that owns Arm&Hammer (the baking soda company) at one point.

I notice that in my home state, the head of more than one auto dealership had the same last name as the brand of car sold by the dealership, for reasons that were coincidences.

I wonder if there is some kind of unconscious social bias at work in these cases?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism

If your name matches a brand of a car it might be rational to sell that brand; assuming it's otherwise a completely arbitrary choice, it probably helps name recognition and memory, since some customers will probably mention it as a mildly interesting anecdote to their friends and family.

Armand Hammer wasn't the CEO, just a minority shareholder and board member. He wanted to buy the company because he liked the name and apparently already used an arm and hammer as his personal insignia. (Fun fact: His grandson is Armie Hammer, the actor, who was named after him.)

Head of the Sydney Water Board Union was named Sydney Lake.

Arsene Wenger, former Arsenal manager

(Googler, opinion is my own).

Technically, no. He's head of Commerce, which is different than payments (I'm in payments). You can see from that page, they do things like shopping listings, and the experience around it. Payments (at least at Google) is just a service that teams like that can use. You'll notice that checkout screens for shopping, ads, Youtube, Store, etc... are all very similar. That final payment experience is Payments.

One of the highest judges in the UK is Lord Judge, who used to be Judge Judge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igor_Judge,_Baron_Judge

Or when your name is Rich Ricci and you run a bank...

He used to be an EVP at PayPal :)

Food For The Poor President and Chief Executive Officer used to be Robin Mahfood

A name, a destiny.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism

He has embraced the concept:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/williamready/

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