We Name the Nameless

A couple weeks ago, I shared a tidbit about having made up my own names for the individual members of America Sings's Gander Quartet*, since they never had official ones, and teased that I might do an entire post about this weird habit I've developed of doing just that. Let it never be said that I'm content to be a tease...

Walt Disney and the entertainment empire he founded have created dozens, if not hundreds, of beloved characters, from Mickey Mouse (or Oswald the Lucky Rabbit) to Baymax. But not all Disney characters first knew life on the big or small screen. Plenty of characters have been created just for the parks as well, but they rarely get the same attention as their animated or even live-action counterparts. This is surely in part—a large part—because everyone in the developed world has had a crack at the movies, but only a small percentage** of people ever get a chance to see the likes of Trader Sam or Madam Leota. Another obstacle to the prominence of the park characters is that most of them only appear for a few seconds to a few minutes at a time and are rarely the center of a sustained narrative. They don't get the heartwarming character arcs or thrilling action sequences that so endear the likes of Ariel or Simba to the masses.

Most of them don't even have names.

It's sad but true. Even on the plans for animatronic-heavy attractions, where you would expect to find the figures' official names if they had been given any, they are usually referred to by numbers and/or simple descriptions. Granted, it's probably easier for someone setting up audio-animatronics and perhaps unfamiliar with park lore to identify the right figure from a description rather than a name...but come on. These are characters, and since they have such a brief time to leave an impression, their personalities are big and obvious. They deserve a little fleshing-out.

Hey...what are just-shy-of-obsessed fans for?

I think my habit of naming the nameless characters started while I was writing my big Disney fanfic Crowns of the Kingdom. (If you're curious, there's a link in the sidebar. Just sayin'.) A number of characters from Disneyland attractions make appearances in that story, and I couldn't write about them if I didn't have anything to call them...and ideally something a little more personal than “Pirate With Stack of Hats” or “Fishing Indian Boy.”

The above two are just examples, by the way. The pirate with the stack of hats and the fishing Indian boy do not actually make cameos in Crowns of the Kingdom. The Gander Quartet does, but at the time I didn't think to name them because a) they don't really display individual personalities or initiative and b) I was a less experienced, less witty writer in those days. But I did assign names to another musical foursome:

 

Yes, that's the Marc Davis concept art and not a photo. I couldn't actually find a really good photo of these guys that included the dog. I even tried pulling a screenshot from a YouTube video shot in HD, but the movement still caused it to come out too blurry for my tastes. So here we are. From left to right, I think of these fellows as Mandolin Mike, Billy Willikins, Long Dan, and Scruffy. The first three sound like the sorts of names or nicknames pirates might actually go by. The last isn't remotely as clever, but it sounds like the sort of obvious name un-clever (but musically talented) pirates might give to their canine sidekick.

In the same story, I promoted six children from “it's a small world”—three boys and three girls—to Named Character status. They were Pablo (Mexico), Umeko (Japan), Masamba (Malawi), Vasanta (India), Tikaani (Inuit), and Anneliese (Netherlands). Interestingly enough, the 2013-2014 animated web series based on this ride also featured three boys and three girls as the central characters. I'm not saying the people who developed the show got the idea from my fanfic, but...great minds think alike? Maybe?

My “Knights of the Magic Kingdom” project prompted me to come up with some more names, in order to establish the attraction worlds as places with their own populations and things going on outside the events of the specific ride narratives. That is still very much a work-in-progress (and it's actually kinda been on hold since I started this blog), but I'm proud of what I've come up with so far.

The Jungle Cruise has a couple of officially and/or unofficially named animatronics already: Trader Sam and Bertha the bathing elephant. Apart from them, the most distinctive “character” on the ride is probably the Great White Hunter stuck at the top of the pole with the rest of the Lost Safari, being prodded for all eternity by an angry rhinoceros:

Look at this guy. This is obviously some British toff who thinks his hunting rifle and ancestral trust fund give him the right to tromp all over Africa and condescend to the natives. An archetypal character like that demands the most pompous name I can come up with, and after playing around with Victorian polysyllables, I landed on Col. Alistair Chauncy Huffingworth-Blake.

But it was when I turned my attention to the Haunted Mansion and its 999 happy haunts that my imagination really went wild. Wild and punnish. I'm not sure why punning seemed so right for this attraction, which doesn't have many instances of wordplay of its own. Although come to think of it, the one big example is a character name: Constance Hatchaway, the most recent incarnation (disincarnation?) of the Bride in the attic. I'm not crazy about her as a character, for reasons I may elaborate on in the future, but the name is a good one. “Constance” is bitterly ironic since she is anything but faithful, and “Hatchaway” (must be her maiden name) points to the truth.

My names run along similar lines. Here's a list, provided without explanation so that you can have a chance to figure out the jokes for yourself!

• Maestro Quaverforth, the Ballroom organist.
• Mr. Turner and Mr. Schute, the dueling portrait ghosts.
• Clive Knockney, the caretaker, and his dog Tucker.
• Drummer, Piper, Harper, Horner, and Flute, the members of the Graveyard Band. (Okay, this one is easy.)
• Naht’turaten and Hebijebes, the mummy and Greek philosopher “conversing” in the graveyard. (I am especially proud of this pair of names.)

That about wraps it up for this week. If you have any non-official names by which you know the park characters, share them in the comments!

* Firth, Sexton, Barrett, and Bates, in that order. Please tell me you get it. If no one gets it I'm going to cry.

** Still adding up to eight digits per park, annually.