Today’s Bizarro, with a canine portmanteau:
That’s Rin Tin Tin, the great movie dog, plus Tintin, the boy hero of the comics (and now the movies), who goes on his adventures with his dog Snowy. (In the cartoon, the dog has the body of Rin Tin Tin and the head of Tintin, so there’s a visual portmanteau to go along with the verbal one.)
January 4, 2012 at 6:30 pm |
Interestingly, both Tintin and Rin Tin Tin are French hypocoristics (for Martin, Augustin, Corentin, and others). The original Rin Tin Tin was one of a pair of German Shepherd puppies rescued and adopted by an American soldier named Lee Duncan near the end of WWI. Duncan named the pair Nénette and Rintintin after the woolen good-luck charms that French children gave to American soldiers: http://www.malraux.org/index.php/motsclefs/870-nenette.html
Upon taking him back to California, Duncan succeeded in getting the intelligent and athletic Rintintin into the movies, as Rin Tin Tin. As for Hergé, it’s possible that he got Tintin’s name from an 1898 comic entitled Tintin Lutin (‘Tintin the imp’) by the French cartoonist Benjamin Rabier: http://lambiek.net/artists/r/rabier_benjamin.htm
Hergé acknowledged Rabier’s influence, but denied that he was the source of Tintin’s name. Rabier is better known as the creator of the Vache Qui Rit emblem: http://www.lavachequirit.com/espace-parents.html
May 14, 2012 at 10:09 am |
[…] Tintin and his quiff, see here (and here); and on Joost Swarte’s character Jopo and his (gigantic) quiff, see here. […]