It's a bit peculiar, but yeah, Charlie Brown for some reason never gets his last name cut off. I don't know whether there's any particular reason just beyond the rhythm of the full name, which Schulz seems to have picked up on pretty quickly. I could swear there's an instance somewhere in the first two Complete Peanuts books where he's addressed just as Charlie, but I don't see it offhand and it's not indexed. I'll dig around when I'm putting off some serious work and report back. (I suppose it's possible Schulz treated the name differently because it came directly from real life; Linus got his first name from Linus Maurer, but not his last.)
There were a few other characters typically addressed by full names, but they were mostly one-shot jokes like Tapioca Pudding. (Charlotte Braun, I suppose, was aimed at becoming a regular, but her personality got shuffled over to Lucy, and anyway using her name in full is just a reflection of Charlie Brown's name.) I'm not sure how to count José Peterson, who got mentioned a lot for a short while but never really had major-character status.
Schroeder ... I hadn't thought about before. I'd thought there might be his last name on a mailbox from early in the strip's run, but I was mistaken -- the strip I was thinking of established his address as 1770 (get it?) James Street, but has no mailbox in sight. Schroeder's name, though, was the last name of a kid Schulz used to caddy with (Schulz didn't remember his first name), according to Peanuts Jubilee.
Calling on web searches ... nobody on Deja Goo seems to have a record of Schroeder's first-or-last name, though it could be in one of the as-yet-unreprinted strips. I have to admit in the (mild) controversy I'd assume Schroeder is his first name, just because it feels odd to have any Peanuts character, even a major one, addressed only by his last name. That he was introduced as Schroeder, not as the Schroders' baby, gives me that feeling too.
And Google turns up a reference to a Schroeder brand of toy pianos made by a German manufacturer in the 1940s ... curious and possibly why the name felt right, to Schulz, though the name was given the character long before he ever touched a piano.
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rosecarmine
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Date: 2005-04-13 11:06 am (UTC)It's a bit peculiar, but yeah, Charlie Brown for some reason never gets his last name cut off. I don't know whether there's any particular reason just beyond the rhythm of the full name, which Schulz seems to have picked up on pretty quickly. I could swear there's an instance somewhere in the first two Complete Peanuts books where he's addressed just as Charlie, but I don't see it offhand and it's not indexed. I'll dig around when I'm putting off some serious work and report back. (I suppose it's possible Schulz treated the name differently because it came directly from real life; Linus got his first name from Linus Maurer, but not his last.)
There were a few other characters typically addressed by full names, but they were mostly one-shot jokes like Tapioca Pudding. (Charlotte Braun, I suppose, was aimed at becoming a regular, but her personality got shuffled over to Lucy, and anyway using her name in full is just a reflection of Charlie Brown's name.) I'm not sure how to count José Peterson, who got mentioned a lot for a short while but never really had major-character status.
Schroeder ... I hadn't thought about before. I'd thought there might be his last name on a mailbox from early in the strip's run, but I was mistaken -- the strip I was thinking of established his address as 1770 (get it?) James Street, but has no mailbox in sight. Schroeder's name, though, was the last name of a kid Schulz used to caddy with (Schulz didn't remember his first name), according to Peanuts Jubilee.
Calling on web searches ... nobody on Deja Goo seems to have a record of Schroeder's first-or-last name, though it could be in one of the as-yet-unreprinted strips. I have to admit in the (mild) controversy I'd assume Schroeder is his first name, just because it feels odd to have any Peanuts character, even a major one, addressed only by his last name. That he was introduced as Schroeder, not as the Schroders' baby, gives me that feeling too.
And Google turns up a reference to a Schroeder brand of toy pianos made by a German manufacturer in the 1940s ... curious and possibly why the name felt right, to Schulz, though the name was given the character long before he ever touched a piano.