From Tristram Shandy by Lawrence Sterne:
But of all names in the universe he [Tristram’s father] had the most unconquerable aversion for TRISTRAM;—he had the lowest and most contemptible opinion of it of any thing in the world,—thinking it could possibly produce nothing in rerum natura, but what was extremely mean and pitiful…
…for in the year sixteen, which was two years before I was born, he was at the pains of writing an express DISSERTATION simply upon the word Tristram,—shewing the world, with great candour and modesty, the grounds of his great abhorrence to the name.
From Louis Althusser‘s autobiography:
Louis, a name I literally abhorred for a long time. I used to find it too short, with only one vowel, and the last one, the i, ended in a sharpness that kept wounding me… Undoubtedly it also said too much of my place: oui (yes), and I would rebel against this “yes” that said “yes” to my mother’s desire, not to mine. And it said above all: lui (he/him), this third-person pronoun, which – sounding like a call to an anonymous third party – stripped me completely of my own personality and alluded to the man behind my back: Lui, it was Louis, my uncle who my mother loved, not me.
From Serotonin by Michel Houellebecq (tr. Shaun Whiteside):
…not only do I find the combination ‘Florent-Claude’ ridiculous, but I find each of its elements disagreeable in itself, in fact I think my first name misses the mark completely. Florent is too gentle, too close to the feminine Florence – in a sense, almost androgynous. It does not correspond in any way to my face, with its energetic features, even brutal when viewed from certain angles, and which has often (by some women in any case) been thought virile – but not at all, really not at all – as the face of a Botticelli queer. As to Claude, let’s not even mention it; it instantly makes me think of the Claudettes, and the terrifying image of a vintage video of Claude François shown on a loop at a party full of old queens comes back to mind as soon as I hear the name Claude.
Cloclo made an appearance in a 2020 post here. But what’s wrong with the Claudettes?
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