“… as in … ‘howdy pardner’ … my parents had a real fine sense of humor” is a common refrain when meeting new people. True enough.

There’s at least one more… a gentleman in the Philippines, whose parents saw the Clint Eastwood movie Paint Your Wagon and naturally assumed Pardner was a perfectly normal American name. Who am I to throw stones? I named my second daughter Jemima after I first saw the name in the credits of a movie filmed in England. (When I say ‘first saw’, syrup bottles don’t count.)

And there’s an “almost” … a gentleman in southern Cal who goes by Pardner since that’s what he was called from birth, including by his godfather, Bing Cosby, who attended his baptism.