Richie Incognito, the Buffalo Bills guard accused recently of using racist slurs against Yannick Ngakoue, is a bit of a jerk.
Incognito is an outspoken Republican and loudly supprted Donald Trump in the latter's elections campaign. He has been voted the dirtiest player in the NFL, and regularly engages in eye gouging, punching and illegal tackles. In 2014, he was pushed out of his previous team, the Miami Dolphins, for bullying black teammate Jonathan Martin and others, including subjecting them to racial insults, threats and ongoing harrassment. These latest claims are therefore not unexpected. He is, as I say, a jerk, and does not deserve a whole lot of media attention.
What I am more interested in, though, is his name. It sounds so much like an assumed or stage name. Can it actually be real?
Well, it turns out that Richard Dominick Incognito Jr. is the son of Ricard Incognito Sr., a New Jersey boy of mixed German and Italian heritage. It further turns out that Incognito is actually a not-uncommon last name in Italy, thought to hark back to centuries past, where parish record scribes were not able to ascertain the father of a baby. Makes sense: incognito, from the Latin, actually just means "unknown", without the connotations of a concealed or disguised identity it now holds in English.
So, Incognito: great name, bit of a jerk.
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