VORNELIUS

SOURCE

Well, what can you say? "Vornelius" is just like "Cornelius" with a "V" instead of a "C". It's hardly indicative of the sort of the customary creative flair and characteristic inventiveness of the sort of African-American nomenclature that we've become somewhat accustomed to.

Maybe it's supposed to be a combination of "Vaughn/Vaughan" which means "little" in Welsh and the Latin-originated name "Cornelius" which means "Horn"?

Hmmm...you know, if your folks gave you a name that meant 'little horn', and knowing the kind of sexual inadequacy-related jokes that you would most certainly be the inevitable butt of, you could almost understand why Vornelius got so pissed off that he had to kill one person and attempt to kill another.

Almost.

Alternatively, it could have been the uncomfortably close proximity of his own name to that of the character "Cornelius" played by Roddy McDowall in Planet Of The Apes that set him off...

...black people generally hate being compared to apes, but you'd have to say this guy's parents were totally asking for it. Short of calling him General Ursus or King Kong, there's not much more they could have done.

This, coupled with the small-penis-suggestiveness of his name's meaning, could possibly go some way as to explaining why he became the seething mass of pent-up homicidal rage that he did.

Possibly.

Anyway, to recap:

1) Don't give your offspring a name which suggests sexual inadequacy
2) Don't give your offspring a name which recalls a popular simian character

I'm giving Vornelius a 3.5, as despite being resoundingly unimaginative, the (hopefully) unintentional belly laughs provided by this one certainly pushes it up a few notches. Heck, if they'd added the prefix 'La', I might have even given them a 4.0

By the way, 'Little Horn' apparently has some sort of Biblical/Satanic significance too...now that is downright spooky!

Literally.