Binky and her books, represent.

Binky Urban is a literary agent. To the extent of my understanding, this means she reads thousands of terrible pitches and manuscripts every year, then finds one or two that are half decent and sells them to a publisher for a half million dollars. The agent’s instincts being top notch, those books then go on to become huge best sellers, Da Vinci Code style (only good), and she makes a cut of the royalties amounting to the GDP of Cape Verde. Rinse, lather, repeat. Especially lather, that’s important in the book world, lathering.

I may not be totally in the know about the world of book agents, and certainly know next to nothing about the art of lathering, other than lathering layers and layers of terrible cheesiness on bad puns (as readers of this blog may know), but I do know that Binky Urban is an exceptionally funny name. I also know she’s one of the best connected, most successful and influential people in the publishing world today.

How do I know that? Well, I saw her name in an article, thought it was funny and researched the person behind the name for a couple of minutes, lazily coming to easy conclusions about that person’s awesomeness and deciding to write about her. It’s basically the story of every Thursday here at the Funny Names Blog.

At night, Binky goes by the name Binky “Keith” Urban, performing Australian-twanged country tunes around the country.

Among the authors Binky represents are Bret Easton Ellis, Cormac McCarthy, Haruki Murakami, Toni Morrison, and Chip Kidd. Yes, there’s a successful writer by the name of Chip Kidd, and that’s worth mentioning. If you can get yourself taken seriously with a name like that, you deserve a book or two written about you (or at least a blog post). If you don’t read much, the other four are generally known in the high society of bookworms as “like, totally awesome, man”, meaning Binky represents some of the biggest names writing books today (although not the funniest – that honor belongs to…um, send your suggestions below the line).

To be called Binky and climb to the position of one of the most successful people in your field takes some gumption. And we like people with gumption here at Funny Names HQ. We don’t exactly know where the name comes from, but I do know that the Urban Dictionary offers the least helpful definition of “binky” ever, with this doozy :

That amazing sideways hoppy-jumpy, skippy,twisty, throwing-themselves-through-the-air thing rabbits do when they’re extra-happy

Perhaps she likes to eat lettuce, and is delighted with the way things are going, therefore leading her to pick up a name meaning a very happy rabbit. Yes, that makes perfect sense. (It doesn’t).

Regardless, I think we can all agree that Binky Urban is one damn good name. Here’s to Binky!