I don’t think I am the only person to have thought once or twice that it would be nice to have a name like the ones you hear in Westerns: Soaring Eagle, say, or Jumping Raccoon. In one film, of which I remember nothing else, one of the characters said that Native American children were given names on the basis of the first noticeable thing spotted after their birth. I don’t know if that is true, but if it is, it means that in Central Rome, where I live, there would be no chance of being called Soaring Eagle, because there are no eagles, not even drooping ones.
But if I were a member of a native tribe here and the criterion used was the one described, the roll-call of our braves would go something like this:
Crazy Scooter
Sitting Drunk
Missing Cobblestone
Slice of Pizza
Singing Postman
Double Parking
Noisy Seagull
Noisy Crow
Never-arriving bus
Smell of Frying
Chiming Bells
Silly Postcard
Police Siren
Smell of Coffee
Imperturbable Rat
Hanging-in-the-street Washing
Broken Umbrella
Sudden Nuns
Dripping Water
Dog Poop
Cloud of Starlings
Car Horn
Everything-for-1-Euro
At the conferences I work at as a simultaneous interpreter, the audience can listen to a translation in one of the available languages through headphones connected to a receiver. The receiver has a volume control and a channel selection system. Sometimes, people who are not used to these things find them hard to use. They may not know how to turn them on, for example. Or they may not know that there is a dial to choose the language you want to hear.
Sideways Station 