Well, 'Tipsy Imperial Concubine' conjures some interesting/entertaining images. It's a lovely Tea rose of fairly recent vintage.

Happy Butt is still the strangest, as far as I am concerned. I hope others come up with more strange names.

Kate

La Biche...who cares what it really means....the name says it all.

*snicker*

Ronda

Reading your question 'Happy Butt' came to mind, although 'Ultimate Pleasure' will bring up those sites on a google search.
Diana

I still can't believe that someone thought it was a good idea to name a rose "Golden Showers." Must have been quite a naive little rose breeder...

I guess the most awkward rose name I have is Erotica, which has somewhat the same effect as Sexy Rexy, you mentioned in this post. Along the same lines is "X-Rated." But just plain "un-rose-like" to my ear are "Weight Watcher's Success," "Peaudouce," which is or was a German diaper producer, aka Elina (a much more pleasant name), "Moth" (which just makes me think of driftwood-brown bugs). Somehow, the Rugosa rose "Scabrosa" doesn't sound nearly as pretty as it actually is.
One that makes me cringe a bit is "Nigrette," which sounds like a racially insensitive label. I think that rose is also called The Black Rose of Sangerhausen, but I could be mistaken.
There was a similar thread quite a few months ago, and someone made a good point, that being there are many names in other languages that we react to without knowing their actual meaning. I hope I'm not guilty of that in my last example, but I do think if something gives the impression of racial insensitivity, that's enough of a reason to want to avoid using it.

La Biche is a doe as in a female deer!

I'll nominate Precious Platinum.. an nice-sounding name but doesn't give you a hint that the rose is RED! Was a really nice HT by the way, dunno what happened to it.

Many years ago, I stumbled across the website of a rose hybridizer. I believe he was in South Florida.

He had a seedling with the working name of.....

Rose du Retch.

I bet it looked alot like the green rose. Why anyone would pay for THAT is beyond me.

ThonotoRose

Thonotorose - Was Rose du Retch a misspelling of Rose de Rescht? The name is so close.

I have a few more unusual names: Scabrosa, Scorcher, Tall Story, Uncle Walter, Uncle Joe, Land of the Long White Cloud, Leaping Salmon, Narrow Water, Nymphenburg (??), Poker, Pussta, Dwarf Pavement. . .

CJ

Fuzzy Navel is the strangest rose name I've come across so far and I prefer to call it Winter Sunset. But in general I don't find many names strange, they usually have a story behind them. I speak English, French and German and have some knowledge of Italian and Spanish so I rarely get funny notions from a name.

Uncle Walter was Sam McGredy's uncle who taught him rosebreeding after his father had died when Sam was quite young. Land of the long white cloud is the English translation of the Maori name for New Zealand where Sam moved his nursery from Ireland. Sexy Rexy is a nursery inside joke. Rex is a friend of Sam, a steady 60-year-old at the time, long happily married. Nymphenburg is a magnificient palace and park in Munich, Germany and Hamburger Phoenix commemorates the rising of the city of Hamburg from the ashes of World War II. Sponsored names are often in bad taste. Aspirin Rose was sponsored by Bayer Health Care for the 100th anniversary of their pill. Radox Bouquet is named for a foot bath salt. Peaudouce is a rather apt name in itself, it means soft skin, and the French diaper brand is not sold in Sweden so I've kept the original name for my rose. If it had been called Pampers I would probably call it Elina instead.

A Swedish garden writer hated the name Nevada so much, believing it to be named for the state of Nevada that she couldn't force herself to get the rose although she admired it a lot. She didn't realize that it is a Spanish rose with a Spanish name meaning snowy and wanted the name changed to a more romantic sounding French Duchesse something or other. But French is no more romantic than any other language. Boule de neige, for instance, means snowball and how romantic is that?

You guys perked up my day!

The ones I find the strangest are named after real people..... Rossie ODonnell doesn't look nutten' like the rose and this could be a good thing, esp. when she does the Donald Trump hair flip. Hope it has her spunky attitude, if so it should grow well!

Ronald Regan? good thing the rose is pretty and not old and wrinkled...

:)

THese are my favorites:

Buddhist Clothing Fragrance
Flaming Pot Luck
Bad Fussing
Mad Dog Road Tea
Hornish Plot

I wrote these down after a similar post a number of years ago.
Linda

Posted by cjrosaphile

Thonotorose - Was Rose du Retch a misspelling of Rose de Rescht? The name is so close.

No it was not a misspelling. It WAS a play on the name though. I believe that he felt he had a really lousy seedling, hence the name, (translated from the French by me) Rose of Vomit or perhaps The Gag Rose. Lol.

I always wonder why certain rose names fail to make the trip across the Atlantic. One such rose is Parole. It was bred by Kordes and launched at the 2001 Chelsea flower show by Mattocks as Buxom Beauty. It was no coincident that the introduction of the rose happened in tandem with the introducion of a limited edition revolutionary bioform bra with name of - wait for it - "Buxom Beauty"! This was a well executed marketing ploy.

I don't think Kordes publicists did any better by introducing it in north America as Parole. What on earth were they thinking of? Even if the intention was not what you think - "parole" in German apparently means a military passport - the connotation of that name is just not becoming of what is otherwise a gorgeous rose. Instead, it stirs up images of a gorgeous, beautiful criminal!

It's a bit like Chevrolet marketing the Nova with images of brilliant starburst, whereas in Spanish, it literally means "no go"!! It just isn't an easy job being a corporate marketeer, is it?

I wrote a post in this thread but strangely I don't see it.

We have this mostly funny thread every year and every year I see mentioned how embarrassing the name Sexy rexy and Erotika are. Now I take the courage and ask: why would these rose names be embarrassing to the point that it is better not to tell visitors their name? I do not grow Sexy-Rexy because I was told it is very blackspot prone. I do grow Erotika and I do not find the name strange, embarrassing or shameful.

I will get Tipsy Imperial concubine, partly because it is a beautiful rose, partly because I find the name charming.

Happy Butt is one name that does not induce me rush to get this rose.

Mariannese - Thanks for all of your information. It seems only obvious that most of the rose names have a history and reason for being named what they were named. I enjoy hearing these histories and it does help to know them, although when I am showing my garden, most people are interested only in the lovely flowers and don't really want to know all the details about each rose, as disappointing as this is to me.

Being a linguist, I, too, speak, read, write several languages: English, French, Italian, Spanish, some German, some Japanese, three Native American Indian languages and even ancient languages such as Latin, Ancient Greek, Aramaic. Not many share this background.

My linguistic knowledge and ability does not prevent me from thinking that some of these names are pretty bizarre and that the people naming them might have been able to come up with something better to describe the roses' loveliness. The search continues for more bizarre names. . .piu tarde -- CJ

What if the J&P marketing machine could get involved and tweak the names just a little?

Fragrant Military Passport
Happy Butt Perfume

and something with an exclamation point, of course, like:

Uncle Joe!
Scabrosa!

LOL, Gail, I love your ideas! LOL!

I still laff at "GOLDEN SHOWERS."

Cactus Joe, I just checked the German-English dictionary because I had a vague feeling/remembrance that Parole means -also- something different. Die Parole means 'slogan' 'watchword', too. I do not claim that these translations are that much better for a new rose but at least do not recall the connotation you attach to this word.