The Longest Name

How does one get a name that is composed of 11 first names and not be a fugitive from the FBI or Interpol with their wanted poster and aliases sprayed across the Web? Answer: start out as a prince, and never do anything bad enough to become wanted by anyone, except perhaps The Rolling Stones and the crowd at Monte Carlo.

I distinctly remember the aftermath of New York City's newspaper strike of 1963-1964. The famous 114 day strike that caused the merger of three papers to eventually be one paper, however short lived: The World Journal Tribune.

This was an amalgam of The Journal-American, The Herald Tribune and the World Telegram and Sun. The times, they were a changin'. A New Yorker cartoon of the era showed a newspaper delivery truck that looked as long as a stretch limo, just to get the full names of the combined papers on its side. It didn't last.

So, what genetic merger has to occur in families for a person to emerge with the complete name of Rupert Louis Ferdinand Frederick Constantine Lofredo Leopold Herbert Maximilian John Henry du Loewenstein? Answer: Be born as Bavarian royalty on the Spanish island of Majorca to a woman who was a great-daughter of someone who owned a sixth of the Brazilian Crown jewels. How the jewels might have been split up is anyone's guess, but it apparently was more than enough to give Rupert there a sprinting head start in life.

One of the Catholic sacraments is Confirmation, in which the person chooses a confirmation name. This can of course add a single first name to what is usually a first name and a middle name. Most people don't use their confirmation name for any means of identification.

Which of course bring us to Rupert's ID. How big was his passport? What font did they choose to get all of his first name onto a driver's license? Of course Rupert was probably recognized as the official version of his name, as it is used in the obituary headline: 'Prince Rupert zu Loewenstein, 80...'

What's up with the 'zu'? Is it some kind of royal apostrophe used to eliminate all the first names between the first first name and the surname? No response yet from the NYT. No surprise.

The Prince apparently was worth every one of those first names, because he basically created the fortune the Rolling Stones enjoy. He fixed things as well when it came to divorces for Mick and an arrest of Keith Richards on a drug charge. He sounds like he was bigger than U.S. Steel.

But, like many business arrangements it seems, despite his living to be 80, he and the Stones parted ways at some point. Pity about that.

Mick's girlfriend, L'Wren Scott who just recently committed suicide, apparently over her failing fashion business, sounds like she could have used some of the Prince's financial wizardry. At least Mick and his band was able to fly back on his own jumbo jet from Australia to attend Ms. Scott's funeral thanks to Prince Rupert's astute financial handling.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com