Silly names have been a staple of comedy since the early days of vaudeville, and when old burlesque performers eventually moved in front of Hollywood’s rolling cameras their outlandish sobriquets, garish noms de plume, goofy monikers and loopy pseudonyms came along with them

And so pioneers of comedy traipsed across Nickelodeon screens in the guise of characters such as Egbert Souse, Cuthbert J. Twillie, Larson E. Whipsnide, T. Frothingill Bellows, Rollo La Rue, Elmer Prettywillie and Professor Eustace McGargle (all W.C. Fields inventions), or as Wolf J. Flywheel, Dr. Hugo Z. Hackenbush, Otis B. Driftwood and Prof. Quincy Adams Wagstaff (a.k.a. Groucho Marx).

That va-va-voom vamp Mae West gave us the suggestive Marlo Manners, Flower Belle Lee and Peaches O’Day.

And while the comedy team of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy mostly appeared onscreen in their heyday as Stan and Ollie, their earlier screen incarnations, both together and individually, were rich with purple appellations. Stan boasted performances as Ferdinand Finkleberry, Romaine Ricketts, Winchell McSweeney, Rhubarb Vaselino, Gabriel Goober, Dippy Donawho and Magnum Dippytack, while Ollie donned such character names as J. Piedmont Mumblethunder, Sharkey Nye, Oswald Schwartzkopple and Solomon Soopmeat.

Preston Sturges, that master of screwball comedy from the 1930s and ‘40s, wrote into his scripts such distinctively nutty character names as Dr. Zodiac Z. Zippe (“Hotel Haywire”), Charles Poncefort Pike (“The Lady Eve”), Constable Edmund Kockenlocker (“The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek”), Woodrow Lafayette Pershing Truesmith and Sgt. Heppelfinger (“Hail the Conquering Hero”), Harold Diddlebock and E.J. Waggleberry (“The Sin of Harold Diddlebock”) and Judge Alfalfa J. O’Toole (“The Beautiful Blonde From Bashful Bend”).

Comic Bob Hope kept close to his vaudeville roots with such movie names as Milford Farnsworth (“Alias Jesse James”), Pippo Popolino (“Casanova’s Big Night”), Hot Lips Barton (“Road to Rio”), Painless Peter Potter (“The Paleface”) and Humphrey “Sorrowful” Jones (“Sorrowful Jones”).

Even sexpot Marilyn Monroe wasn’t immune to a little suggestively silly nicknaming, appearing on screen as such characters as Sugar Kane Kowalczyk (“Some Like It Hot”), Pola Debevoise (“How to Marry a Millionaire”) and Dusky Ledoux (“Right Cross”).

Hollywood he-men generally veered toward macho character names in their movies, but every so often they also got saddled with slightly silly monikers. John Wayne turned in one of his best performances ever as Rooster Cogburn in “True Grit,” and as an early matinee cowpoke the Duke labored under such trumped-up sagebrush pseudonyms as Stony Brooke, Duke Slade, Biff Smith, Dare Rudd and Singin’ Sandy Saunders.

Even big star James Stewart suspended his leading man image to play such whimsically named characters as Mattie Appleyard (“Fools’ Parade”), Elwood P. Dowd (“Harvey”) and Rowdy Dow (“The Gorgeous Hussy”).

Some modern comic actors still hold to that old tradition of silly names, notably Ben Stiller, who has created such amusing screen roles as Gaylord Focker (“Meet the Parents”), Tugg Speedman (“Tropic Thunder”), Derek Zoolander (“Zoolander”), Bwick Elias (“If Lucy Fell”), Garth Motherloving (TV’s “The Simpsons”) and Reuben Feffer (“Along Came Polly”). And Woody Allen has contributed two of the best with nebbishy Fielding Mellish (“Bananas”) and the pseudo-murderous Virgil Starkwell (“Take the Money and Run”).

Of course, the silly name phenomenon isn’t limited to film comedies. Occasionally, goofy character names even show up in heavyweight dramas – note Tom Cruise as Lestat de Lioncourt (“Interview With the Vampire”) or Robert De Niro as Travis Bickle (“Taxi Driver”). The list is endless.

If there were a Silly Name Hall of Fame we’d nominate all of the above, plus the following, for a place of honor:

Tom Cruise again as Cole Trickle (“Days of Thunder”), Honor Blackman as Pussy Galore (“Goldfinger”), Clint Eastwood as Philo Beddoe (“Every Which Way But Loose”), Uma Thurman as Beatrix Kiddo (“Kill Bill Vols. 1 & 2”), Mark Wahlberg as Dirk Diggler (“Boogie Nights”), Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly (“Breakfast at Tiffany’s”), Dustin Hoffman as Ratso Rizzo (“Midnight Cowboy”), Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko (“Wall Street”), Scott B. Morgan (uncredited) as Keyser Soze (“The Usual Suspects”), Harvey Korman as Hedley Lamarr (“Blazing Saddles”), Steve Buscemi as Mr. Pink (“Reservoir Dogs”), Yano Anaya and Zack Ward as Grover Dill and Scut Farkus (“A Christmas Story”), Sally Kellerman as Hot Lips O’Houlihan (“MASH”), Jon Heder as Napoleon Dynamite (“Napoleon Dynamite”), Louise Fletcher as Nurse Ratched (“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”) and Peter Sellers as President Merkin Muffley (“Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb”).

And naturally there’s George Lucas, who stands in a category of his own for silly and sillier names via “Star Wars” – from the mainstays Luke Skywalker, Han Solo and Darth Vader to supporting players such as Boba Fett, Mace Windu, Jar Jar Binks, Hermi Odle, Jek Porkins, Kit Fisto, Lak Sivrak, Momaw Nadon, Mon Mothma, Nute Gunray, Ponda Baba, Salacious B. Crumb, Sy Snootles, Sio Bibble, Plo Koon, Dexter Jettster and on and on.

Did we leave any out? Have your own favorites? Send them in to dking@wimgo.com and we’ll include them soon in an updated version of this post.

- Dennis King

Long before meta-fiction became a hot literary fad, long before self-referential jokiness and breaking down the fourth wall became hip, Bob Hope and Bing Crosby were cutting up and wink-winking at movie audiences in a zestfully cornball series of road pictures that were box-office gold in the 1940s and ’50s.

All told, the ski-nosed Hope and the satin-voiced Crosby starred in seven “Road to …” movies from 1940 to 1962, and beginning Thursday five of them will be aired over the Turner Classic Movies cable network in a special “On the Road” film event.

The black-and-white films – “Road to Singapore,” “Road to Zanzibar,” “Road to Morocco,” “The Road to Utopia” and “Road to Bali” – will be shown back-to-back Thursday evening into Friday morning and will be re-aired individually in February and March. The two not included in the program are “Road to Rio” (1947) and “Road to Hong Kong” (1962).

Although the actors were said to be bitter rivals off-screen and reveled in scoring snarky digs at each other, Hope and Crosby conjured up an easy-going on-screen chemistry that convinced audiences they were bosom buddies through thick and thin.

Throughout the series, plots were merely thin contrivances that allowed the duo to indulge in loosey-goosey improvisation, banter through loads of inside Hollywood gags, croon their way through a pop songbook of very good to so-so tunes by Johnny Burke and Jimmy Van Heusen and compete for the sexy charms of their perennially underappreciated though well-endowed co-star Dorothy Lamour.

By today’s standards, the films rank as pretty corny stuff. But Hope and Crosby were masters at vaudeville-style banter, and their spoofing of action-movie conventions and their meta-cinematic asides in which they spoke directly to the camera, delivering digs at Paramount and all manner of sacred Hollywood cows, produced a kind of devil-may-care sass that audiences loved.

Subsequent biographies and interviews have revealed though that most of the “ad-libs” that the duo spun out so effortlessly were in fact lines carefully written by a gaggle of radio gag writers employed by each man. But those were the days of studio supremacy, when carefully cultivated public images were the norm and tawdry truth was routinely suppressed.

Nevertheless, the Road pictures are indeed priceless relics of a simpler time and place, and if you can tolerate two supreme Hollywood egos thrusting and parrying with oh-so-glib one-liners and smug insouciance, this TCM fest is worth a look.

The schedule is:

“Road to Singapore” (1940), 7 p.m., Thurs., repeating  1 p.m., March 11 –  A runaway tycoon and his sailor buddy try to con their way through the South Seas.

“Road to Zanzibar (1941), 8:30 p.m., Thurs., repeating 9:15 a.m., March 14 – A lady con artist scams two out-of-work entertainers into financing a safari.

“Road to Morocco” (1942), 10:15 p.m., Thurs., repeating 1 p.m., Feb. 28 – Two castaways get mixed up in an Arabian nightmare when they’re caught between a bandit and a beautiful princess.

“Road to Utopia (1946), 11:45 p.m., Thurs., repeating 2:30 p.m., Feb. 28 – Two song-and-dance men on the run masquerade as killers during the Alaskan gold rush.

“Road to Bali (1952), 1:30 a.m., Fri. – Two song-and-dance men on the run dive for treasure while competing for a beautiful princess.

Around 1977, there were tentative plans for an eighth Road movie, to be titled “Road to the Fountain of Youth.” But Crosby died that year of a heart attack. Even so, rumors persisted that Hope might team with Red Skelton or George Burns to continue the franchise, but nothing ever came of that.

– Dennis King