NAME OF THE GAME : Would Heidi Have Made Headlines With a Moniker Like Myrtle?

Emptying my grocery cart the other night, trying to avert my eyes from yet another screamer-of-a-tabloid Heidi headline, I put myself to thinking instead about Esther Blodgett and Elizabeth Short, two other local girls who made it big, if not always good.

Esther never existed; Elizabeth did, but not for very long. Esther Blodgett was the heroine of the film “A Star Is Born,” a star-struck kid who came to town, married a movie star and became one herself. Elizabeth was a star-struck kid who came to town and got spectacularly murdered. She only became a star in the papers, after she was dead.

Esther and Elizabeth would never have made it big under their real names. A movie mogul bestowed the marquee name of Vicki Lester on Esther Blodgett. Newspaper accounts gave Elizabeth Short her fabled nickname, the Black Dahlia.

Heidi was naturally blessed with her given name--or rather, the tabloids were singularly blessed in Heidi. Names surely make news, but what kind of names make what kind of news?

What if the Hollywood Madam had been not Heidi but, let us say, Ethel, or Myrtle? Would she still have made such headlines? Would she have embarked on that line of work at all? My great-aunt Myrtle is a woman of character and wit but not, never, madam material. But Heidi conjures blond braids and innocence: a name to snare ratings with.

In the dispute over which wields the greater influence, nature or nurture, don’t underestimate nomenclature. How many Wilburs find themselves goaded into a lifetime of playground fights over their name? How many Bambis feel compelled to carry their MBAs in their purses to prove they are to be taken seriously?

Is a less-than-queenly name license for being treated frivolously? Would Hillary be first-name fodder for stand-up comics and sitting congressmen if she were Elizabeth or Anne? Most children are given diminutives, but “Tommy” turns into “Tom” or “Thomas” pretty early--about the time he doesn’t want his parents to hug him in front of his friends. “Susie” and “Kathy” stick far longer. (That was the swell thing about “Thelma and Louise”--tough names, tough women, no diminutives, no bull.)

Heidi’s name needed no adornment. But criminal history is rich with wrongdoers who might have died in obscurity without some vivid, jaunty handle--Pretty Boy Floyd, Murph the Surf--dreamed up by cops or cop reporters to create a special, perverse distinction in a society awash in anonymous crime.

L.A.’s press gave us Tiger Woman in the ‘20s after Clara Phillips killed her husband’s lover with a claw hammer on a Montecito Heights hillside. A decade later Rattlesnake James bought two snakes, and after they had fanged his pregnant girlfriend, he sold them back to the snake dealer. And the Alphabet Bomber in ’74 blew up targets (airport, A, lockers, L) whose first letters spelled out the name of his own little political group.

The old Herald Examiner christened the 1980s serial killer the Night Stalker long before they knew that the sobriquet Richard Ramirez had chosen for himself was Night Prowler, from a heavy-metal album.

And the Clearasil Bandit made noises about suing the FBI last year. What seemed to annoy him most was not getting arrested for some San Diego bank robberies, but that nickname --a humiliating dig at his acne . In Florida, he told a reporter with some dignity, they called him the Fashion Bandit.

Whatever his hopes, the 26-year-old man born Keith Hall was surely tempting fate when he changed his name; his recent arrest on a rape charge in Placer County would probably not have made the newswire had Hall not taken the name Successful Peaceful Excellent.

Decades ago, the Herald used to give flower names to murder victims--all of them comely, of course--but of late, flashy nicknames have been reserved for the killers, not their victims, which must constitute an odd kind of respect for the dead.

In case you think all this is some modern media invention, I remind you that almost 225 years ago, this fledgling burg was dubbed Our Lady Queen of the Angels of Porciuncula. Porciuncula is a Franciscan shrine near Assisi. It means “Little Portion.”

Now I ask you: What kind of city would we have been if we’d stuck with a handle like “Little Portion”?