The Elephant Explained

On the way to Austin Saturday [to attend their satellite Rally to Restore Sanity—I'll be blogging about it later this week] I happened to hear this delightful interview with Sir Michael Caine on NPR.

I would have enjoyed the interview anyway, but what really caught my ear was Sir Michael's explanation of the curious name used to describe the neighborhood where he grew up. I recently had occasion to recall it when I ate at a Washington, D.C. pub that cribbed the name.

It's the Elephant and Castle, and I'd always wondered where the name came from, how two such disparate nouns got combined in the name of a pub, tube station, and neighborhood.

Of course, I could have googled it before, as I did this morning, and found different explanations. (Here's one that refutes Caine's.) But it was much more fun hearing him discuss it. He even plays on this great name in the title of his new memoir, which he was plugging on the radio: The Elephant to Hollywood. Clever, eh?