Pawnee’s Wildest Names
What’s in a name? A hyphen, probably
I love Michael Schur, and you probably do too. He wrote on The Office (and played Mose Schrute), then he created and ran Parks and Rec, and then he created and ran The Good Place. He also turned all of the ethics things he learned on Good Place into a book called How to Be Perfect, which I listened to this summer and LOVED. Generally I’m not a philosophy books person, but if you have the creator and cast of The Good Place read it to me, I am IN. You can never tell what a famous person is really like, of course,1 but Mike Schur seems like someone who is trying to be a force for good in the world.
But what kind of good? If Mike Schur’s ethics book is Lawful Good and his Mose Schrute sprint is Neutral Good, his character names are Chaotic Good. He gives his characters names that are almost onomatopoeiac; the sound of them tells you something. “Leslie Knope” and “Ron Swanson” are so good because you know EXACTLY what kind of person has that name. The name “Eleanor Shellstrop” sounds like a woman who may be good or she may be mischievous. “Tahani al-Jamil” flows elegantly off the tongue.
Naming a main character is serious business. But when you’re naming a one-off character, you can really go nuts… and Mike Schur does. For today’s perfect thing, I present to you a list of ten real character names from Parks and Recreation, pulled from the book Pawnee: The Greatest Town in America:
Tag yourself, I’m Gretzky-Susan.
fool me once, John Mulaney…