Our friend Evan Schiller (of “Ten Crazy Facebook Groups” fame) pointed us to a good old-fashioned online whale-naming. From Evan’s blog:

Generally, rescued whales are tagged and promptly named Willy, or something equally trite. But in this case, Greenpeace decided to leave the naming up to the dopey, glassy-eyed masses.

“More than 11,000 possible whale names were submitted but we are now down to the last 30 possible whale names. Choose your favourite name from among the 30 below and hit the submit button at the bottom of the page. The voting ends on the 30th of November 2007 at 17:00 Amsterdam time.”

One name choice, Kaimana, means ‘divine power of the ocean’ in Polynesian. Another, Amal, translates to ‘hope’ in Arabic. But one name shines above the rest: Mister Splashy Pants (which doesn’t translate to anything, as you probably imagined).

Of course he voted for Mr. Splashy Pants. And he’s not alone…

“I’m no soothsayer,” Evan said. “But if you’ve ever dreamed of being part of something great, I’m gonna go ahead and say this is probably your chance.”