Yek.

Every kid finds out at some point what his name spelled backward is. Although it was sad to find out my last name becomes Yek -- as in Yecch! -- it was certainly not the worst, and had the benefit of being easy to say.

Some such names are pretty useless. Smith becomes Htims; Jones becomes Senoj. Hard to pronounce, not much fun anyway. My grammar school had a lot of Irish, Italian, and Jewish kids, so most of them were completely messed up, like an Oihccevled or Ydducilligcm or Zitwokfel. You can't do anything with those kinds of names. You can't even pretend they are magic words -- you couldn't possibly say them fluidly, and they look like what they are -- backward last names. Only Zatanna or her dad could make them work.

First names were a little better. We had Retep, which sounds like it might be Indian or Pakistani; Kram was funny; and we had a lot of Nhojs. I didn't mind Derf, although it sounds like an insult. Yek! Derf! seems to go together all too well. Kcirederf, the full version, sounds like a Hungarian insult. Yek! Kcirederf!

The girls didn't fare much better. Annod wasn't too bad, but Yhtak is just a mess; we had one Eveiveneg among the group, as I recall.

Celebrities and other well-known persons make interesting mangles when backward. Naihsadrak Mik, Sboj Evets, Sknah Mot, Pmurt J. Dlanod -- they all look like something a mad Serbian scribbled on a cocktail napkin after the PCP kicked in.

You want to know: What about the dogs? Well, Tralfaz would become Zaflart, which is even worse than his actual name; Nipper is Reppin, which could be Japanese, I'm thinking.

I remember thinking that names spelled backward would be good to use for passwords or secret messages, but I have never managed to do so. When the time comes even now, in an era where passwords are much more important than when I was a kid, it's not popped into my head to use Derf or any of the other variations.

As I think about this silly topic, I remember we had one Bobby in my class, who for the sake of the pastime insisted on being Bob. That way instead of being Ybbob (pronounced Eebubob), he would just stay Bob. That was probably a smart play, but it felt like he was being boring on purpose. At least he could have been Trebor.