Why All the Weird Names at NPR?
My thought: they’re not any weirder than a list of names you could generate from your local large corporation, faculty at a university, students at a city school, etc. The reason their names stand out to us is that we hear them spoken aloud regularly. Reporters sign off with their names, and anchors pass off to them by using their names. They take on a rhythm and musicality and we become interested in the way some of them sound. Compare this to normal life, where we don’t often hear long lists of names spoken aloud in a single day. The last times I can remember that being a thing were in high school, where lists of sports team members or prize winners would occasionally be called over the PA, and when I had a job at a summer camp that entailed making various assignments to groups for 100 or so kids every two weeks. I noticed the same phenomenon in both instances – because you’re speaking/hearing the names aloud, some of them jump out with a unique feel and musicality. In fact, at the c
