Zippy names

Today’s Zippy, with fanciful names:

From Cookie Gowac to the Turbomax X-E.

Cookie Gowac is a real person, Celeste “Cookie” Gowac of the New Image Salon (25 Falls Road, Moodus CT):

New Image Salon is a full service unisex salon owned and operated by Cookie Gowac and employs a staff of 5 to meet your salon needs. (link)

The boyfriend Budwell I can’t put my finger on; Budwell is a modestly common family name, but rarely used as a personal name, so far as I can tell. Maybe Bill Griffith just liked the sound of the name.

The onomastic masterstroke here is surely Rex and Vortex Goretex, playing on the brand name Gore-Tex.

Then we come to the 2012 Turbomax X-E from General Motors (apparently not a real car). This name looks like a combo of Turbomax (as in the Indica V2 Turbomax from Tata Motors: “India’s favorite family car now comes with added muscle”) and XE, naming car models that are special in some way (the forthcoming Jaguar XE; the Nissan Micra, Xterra, Sunny, Titan, and Pickup XE; the Saturn Aura and Outlook XE, the Peugeot 207 and 308 XE; the Subaru Forester 2.0 XE; the Toyota Corolla XE-G; the Land Rover Freelander XE; and the Ford Falcon XE, produced by Ford of Australia in 1982-84, in a series of cars going from XA through XH).

(Yes, the license plate on that remarkabke car — knowing Griffith, this is probably a drawing of an specific car — does appear to say DRANO, as in the drain cleaner.)

As you can see, Griffith is a connoisseur of brand names.

2 Responses to “Zippy names”

  1. Ray Brooks Says:

    I always love it when Zippy gets a mention. But…could the auto license tag be “Drang”?

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