Gosh.

When I was doing my reading on standards, identity, and highly skewed distributions one of the many places they all come together is around names.  Names powerlaw distributed, and there are some amusing stories of about extreme cases.  For example at one point in England so many males came to be named after the King that they had to introduce last names just to be able to differentiate.

Brad DeLong caught a good story of this kind today.  The remains of Super Typhoon Melor, brought unseasonable rains to Berkeley.  Classic blog posting material.  But then he gets this single comment.

kaleidescope said…

Typhoon Melor. During the Thirties, scores of Soviet citizens named their children Melsor, which stood for Marx, Engels, Stalin, October Revolution. After Khruschev’s 1956 speech to the 20th Party Conference, the Melsors changed their names to Melor.

I love the Internet, Surely some revelation is at hand.