You've all seen by now the story of adorable little (and he is, alas) Adolf Hitler Campbell and the birthday cake that Shop-Rite would not inscribe but the Wal-Mart would.
Let's just say we hope the kid grows up to be an apple that falls quite far away from the tree.
Meanwhile, though, here's another interesting and larger issue. According to the site whitepages.com, there are 23 Hitlers listed in American telephone directories. There are two Adolfs, which might be jokes (or admirers who changed their names), but there appear to a bunch of people with perfectly normal first names, living in perfectly normal places, who happen to have the last name Hitler.
Uh, wouldn't you change it? Or are these 21 people white supremacists who changed their names to Hitler? I would assume there's a mix, I guess. But if you're just a regular person who's saddled with the name Hitler, I mean really. How do you drop off your dry cleaning, or call for a pizza?
Likewise there are 73 Stalins in the United States. There are five Josephs, one Josef, one Joe, and, this being America, one Jose. Really, what gives here?
Finally, there was an NFL lineman (he may still play, I guess) named Stalin Colinet. I always wondered about that one, and sure enough, I fish out this NY Daily News profile from 1996 confirming Occam's Razor. The explanation is just what you'd think:
Joseph also gave his youngest son a name he would have to explain the rest of his life. His brothers, Max and Fritz, usually called him "Stretch," or "Stan." "Stalin" was a running joke, but a quiet one. Nobody laughed about the name, in front of the man who gave it.
"To be honest, I think my dad was a closet communist," Max said, now laughing. "But what a great name. And when you see my brother, you say, 'Uh-huh, You look like a Stalin."'
Well, that's one way to look at it.
