There is a Japanese folktale of a boy with such a long name that, after falling into a lake, his parents can barely save him after all the time it takes for witnesses to repeat the boy’s name. In another version of the story, the long-named child suffers a nasty blow on the head; by the time the information can be breathlessly repeated to its parents, the bump has already disappeared. An indulgently long name, the moral goes, can be a gift or a curse. But if you’re a savvy self-promoter in the Guinness World Records era, it can also be your claim to fame.
Meet Hubert Wolfstern, senior. Born in Germany in the early 1900s before spending most of his life as a printer in Philadelphia, Hubert is a man of many names. Indeed, according to the Guinness Book of Records for much of the 1970s and 1980s, Hubert Wolfstern was the man with the most names: 26 names (one for each letter of the alphabet, from Adolph to Zeus), and a surname that lasts 666 letters.
Such a long name leaves many options for abbreviation. On official documents, such as his Social Security card, Hubert used the first 35 letters of his last name: Hubert Blaine Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorff, Sr (according to a 1964 report, the monstrous moniker once broke a life insurance company’s computer when failed to process his full name; instead his policy had to be laboriously processed by hand). Elsewhere, you’ll likely see it signed “Hubert B. Wolfe + 666, Sr.” But if you were really close to Hubert, you might be lucky enough to see him write what he claims is his entire appellation of him, as he would have done on a 1963 Christmas card. FYI:
“Adolph Blaine Charles David Earl Frederick Gerald Hubert Irvin John Kenneth Lloyd Martin Nero Oliver Paul Quincy Randolph Sherman Thomas Uncas Victor William Xerxes Yancy Zeus Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorffwelchevoralternwarengewissenhaftschaferswessenschafewarenwohlgepflegeundsorgfaltigkeitbeschutzenvorangreifendurchihrraubgierigfeindewelchevoralternzwolfhunderttausendjahresvorandieerscheinenvonderersteerdemenschderraumschiffgenachtmittungsteinundsiebeniridiumelektrischmotorsgebrauchlichtalsseinursprungvonkraftgestartseinlangefahrthinzwischensternartigraumaufdersuchennachbarschaftdersternwelchegehabtbewohnbarplanetenkreisedrehensichundwohinderneuerassevonverstandigmenschlichkeitkonntefortpflanzenundsicherfreuenanlebenslanglichfreudeundruhemitnichteinfurchtvorangreifenvorandererintelligentgeschopfsvonhinzwischensternartigraum, Senior.”
(Want to hear Microsoft Sam read that? It takes a full minute, but you could do a lot worse. The longest word in English takes three hours to recite.)
Hubert claimed that his great-grandfather composed the surname himself in the 1800s because German Jews did not always use a middle name. The surname tells the story, vaguely, of a wolf killer who lived in a stone house and whose ancestors arrived on Earth 1,200,000 before the first humans on a light-powered rocket to search for a new planet for their peaceful race and intelligent.
Suspicious writers, however, seem to think that Hubert may have made up his own name as a way to get some media attention, and he has succeeded. In addition to the aforementioned entries in the Guinness Book of World Records (which no longer recognizes “longest name” entries, perhaps to dissuade attention-seeking parents from preparing their children for a life of ridicule), Hubert has appeared in several books by nonfiction, a handful of national press articles, and various television specials. In 1952, TIME magazine reported on a typo made in the Philadelphia Inquirer, which reported that a “Hubert B. Wolfeschlegelsteinhasenbergerdorff” had registered to vote. Hubert wrote the Inquirer with one correction: the “u” in “hausen” was dropped.
Was Hubert a proud German struggling to preserve his ancestral roots, or was he a fame-seeking troll doing his best to play tricks on the world before the internet age? Hubert, now deceased, cannot tell us. But for a clue to the truth, we can look to his own words recorded in the Associated Press. “When someone calls my name, I have no problem finding out who they’re referring to,” said Mr. Wolfe +666, Sr.. “I like to be unique. I don’t like being part of the common herd.
Want a way to remember Hubert’s incredibly long name? These memory tricks will make sure you never forget anyone’s name again.
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Source: wikimedia.org
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