[In case the img source for this comic goes dark later: it is Gray.]
Characters with last names that we know:
Charlie (and Sally) Brown (of course)
Linus and Lucy (and Rerun) Van Pelt
and now: Violet Gray
There are a few other characters with known last names. "Peppermint" Patty has one, Reichardt.
I always thought that Schroeder was a last name, and we don't know his first.
ReplyDeleteIt appears that Violet's last name exists solely so Schulz could make a word play on "tattletale gray." This was a phrase that turned up in advertising in the 1930s to indicate something that was dirty, or that had been washed but still had stains. It also referred to gray hairs on the head of someone who used hair dye. Check out this vintage ad for Fels-Naptha soap:
ReplyDeletehttp://cgi.ebay.com/Fels-Naptha-Soap-Banish-Tattle-Tale-Gray-1-2-Pg-1935-Ad-/350338546183?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item5191cdfa07
By the time this strip appeared, the phrase had entered the popular vernacular.
Aaaah, interesting. I didn't get the base joke, but figured it was good to point out the last name. It seems that the phrase is no longer in currency.
ReplyDeleteI didn't know about Tattletale Gray but I suspected as much. I have some interest in the surnames of the characters, but I do have much interest in PigPen's true name!
ReplyDeleteWe know that 5's full name is 555 95472.
ReplyDeleteYeah, 5 falls under the latter category of names we know but haven't come up yet, so we don't "know" it yet. (Neither do we "know," by that same token, of 5, or "Peppermint" Patty.)
ReplyDeleteWikipedia gives two possible last names for Marcie (Johnson and Howe) but says neither was explicitly used in the strip. Johnson came from an animated movie (not canonical). It doesn't really say where Howe came from. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcie_%28Peanuts%29#History_of_the_character
ReplyDelete