Kemosabe and Tonto

Originally a radio drama, The Lone Ranger first aired in 1933 and ran through 1954. It featured the adventures of a mysterious masked man who traveled the West with his faithful Native American companion Tonto and his white horse Silver, righting wrongs.

It became a book series and then a very successful television series, which ran from 1949 to 1957.

Clayton Moore as the Lone Ranger riding Silver and
Jay Silverheels as Tonto riding Scout, 1956

Kemosabe (Ke-mo sah-bee) is the term that was used by Tonto on the TV and radio programs in addressing his partner the Lone Ranger.

Native American writer Sherman Alexie, who is of Coeur D'Alene descent, has said that kemosabe means “idiot” in Apache. “They were calling each other 'idiot' all those years,” he told an interviewer in 1996, a few years after the publication of his story collection The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.

It’s more complicated and there is no conclusive evidence as to its true definition or its roots. Series creator Fran Striker himself never explained it. Most people interpreted it to mean “faithful friend or trusty scout,” and this is the most common interpretation. The Yale Book of Quotations cites a boys’ camp in Mullet Lake, Mich., named Ke Mo Sah Bee, and on separate occasions, Striker’s son and daughter each suggested this might be where the show got it from. 

To further complicate matters, "tonto" is a Spanish word that means stupid, foolish; idiot, or fool. Tonto's tribal identification is ambiguous. On the radio series, he was reportedly described as a Potawatomi though that tribe did not live in the southwest, where the show is set.

In the most recent film adaptation of the series, Johnny Depp is still Tonto and still says things like, “Justice is what I seek, kemosabe.”

Pseudonyms: Fictional Superheroes

Pseudonyms are frequently used with fictional characters in films, on TV, in books and in comic books..

Clint Eastwood and Calvin Klein are names applied to fictional Marty McFly in Back To The Future .

As a Seinfeld fan, I know that Art Vandelay is a pseudonym used by George Costanza.

On TV's Breaking Bad, Heisenberg is the pseudonym taken by Walter White, and in the series prequel, Better Call Saul, Saul Goodman is the name taken by James "Jimmy" McGill.

On TV's long running series Doctor Who, the protagonist is known simply as The Doctor.

Do you remember The Shadow (Lamont Cranston) from the classic radio series?

TV Trivia: Who took the pseudonyms Regina Phalange and Ken Adams?  It was Phoebe Buffay and Joey Tribbiani on Friends.

Do you know Lord Voldemort's "real" name? Tom Marvolo Riddle is the character's name in the Harry Potter Series.

If you read the James Bond novels or watch the films, you might know that M is Sir Miles Messervy and Q is the code name for Major Boothroyd.

The Scarlet Pimpernel is actually the character Sir Percy Blakeney.

In The Three Musketeers we meet Athos (Armand de Sillègue d'Athos d'Autevielle, Le Comte de La Fère) and d'Artagnan (Charles de Batz-Castelmore), Porthos (Isaac de Porthau, Baron du Vallon de Bracieux de Pierrefonds) and Aramis (Henri d'Aramitz, le Chevalier d'Herblay).

Zorro is the name taken by Don Diego de la Vega.

Mr. Underhill is a name used by Frodo Baggins) in the Lord Of The Rings series.

         

Comic book characters, especially superheroes, almost always have pseudonyms.

1. The Hulk (Dr. Robert Bruce Banner) - Marvel Comics
2. Spider-Man (Peter Benjamin Parker) - Marvel Comics
3. Black Cat (Felicia Hardy) - Marvel Comics
4. Wolverine (Logan, James Howlett) - Marvel Comics
5. Captain America (Steven Grant "Steve" Rogers) - Marvel Comics
6. Superman (Kal-El / Clark Kent) - DC Comics
7. Wonder Woman (Princess Diana of Themyscira / Diana Prince) - DC comics
8. Batman (Bruce Wayne) - DC Comics
9. Catwoman (Selina Kyle) - DC Comics and as Patience Phillips in the 2004 film
10. Rorschach (Walter Joseph Kovacs) - Watchmen (Alan Moore graphic novel)
11. Doctor Octopus (Dr. Otto Gunther Octavius) - Marvel Comics
12. The Penguin (Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot) - DC Comics
13. The Riddler (Dr. Edward Nigma) - DC Comics
14. Huntress (Helena Wayne) - DC Comics
15. Huntress (Helena Bertinelli) - DC Comics
16. Batgirl (Barbara Gordon) - DC Comics
17. Batgirl (Cassandra Cain) - DC Comics
18. The Flash (Jay Garrick) - DC Comics
19. The Flash (Barry Allen) - DC Comics
20. The Flash (Wally West) - DC Comics
21. The Flash (Bart Allen) - DC Comics

Dracula and Vampires

Dracula is an 1897 Gothic horror novel by Irish author Bram Stoker.

Although more people probably know the character from the many movie versions, the character of the vampire Count Dracula in the novel is the fictional origin story.

Stoker did not invent the idea of a vampire, but he certainly set the modern form of it.

His novel tells the story of vampire Count Dracula's move from Transylvania to England in search of new blood and to spread the curse of the undead curse. He is opposed by those who follow Professor Abraham Van Helsing.

The first appearance of the English word vampire (as vampyre) in English was a travelogue titled Travels of Three English Gentlemen published in 1745, but vampires had already appeared in French and German literature.

Austria gained control of northern Serbia and Oltenia in 1718 and officials noted the local practice of exhuming bodies and "killing vampires."

The English term was probably derived via French vampyre) from the German Vampir, in turn from the Serbian vampir.

Stoker’s vampire was based on Vlad the Impaler (Vlad Tepes), a Romanian prince who had a thing for impaling his enemies. His father, Vlad II, was known as Dracul, meaning dragon or devil, because of he was a member of a  group of knights called The Order of the Dragon.

Prince Vlad was born in 1431 into a noble family of Transylvania, a place that was between the two empires of the Ottoman Turks and the Austrian Hapsburgs. Vlad "Dracula" (diminutive of Dracul)
was imprisoned by the Turks and later by the Hungarians.

Theirs is not a happy family story.  Dracula's father was murdered. His older brother, Mircea, was blinded with red-hot iron stakes and buried alive.

As Vlad the Impaler, Dracula's preferred method of torture for prisoners was to impale them and leave them to writhe in agony.

In battle, supposedly one Turkish advance was halted because they couldn't get past the smell from decaying impaled corpses.

Stories of his actions became legend. Though it was never claimed that he was a vampire Did he eat his meals surrounded by hundreds of impaled victims? Did he eat bread dipped in blood?

He was killed in December 1476 fighting the Turks near Bucharest, Romania. He was buried at the Snagov Monastery nearby. The monastery was also used as a prison and torture chamber. When prisoners prayed before an icon of the Blessed Virgin, a trap door opened dropping them onto sharp stakes below.

Nosferatu, from the 1922 German film, directed by F. W. Murnau,
starring Max Schreck as the vampire Count Orlok
(name changed to avoid copyright issues with the Stoker estate)

Moby Dick

Before there was Herman Melville's white whale, Moby Dick, in his novel of the same name, there was Mocha Dick.

Mocha Dick male albino sperm whale that lived in the Pacific Ocean in the early 19th century who had quite a reputation. The whale was frequently encountered in the waters near the island of Mocha, off southern Chile.

The American explorer Jeremiah N. Reynolds published his account, "Mocha Dick: Or The White Whale of the Pacific: A Leaf from a Manuscript Journal" in 1839 in The Knickerbocker and it was part of the inspiration for Melville's 1851 novel Moby-Dick.

Believed to have been active from 1810 to 1859, Mocha Dick was infamous for the ferocity of his retaliations against those who attempted to capture him. From the first recorded encounter near the South American island of Mocha till the fatal harpoon blow, Mocha Dick was a legend in his own time. Mocha Dick survived nearly 100 whaler attacks before he was finally killed while coming to the aid of a female whale and her calf.

Mocha Dick: The Legend and Fury