Andrew Fippinger asked :' Does anyone know the real identity (if there is one) of Percy  Elphinstone from Lolita?'

 

Without answering his question ( is there a real Elphinstone? Or Shakespeare, Edsel...) I would like to remind him that Nabokov often plays with derivatives that suggest "ivory", not only in connection to black and white ivory chess-pieces, but to dentists. No time to check in Lolita (nor in Pnin), but I recollect that I often came accross dentists named Dr. Ivory ( Quilty's brother, for example).

 

In German ivory is ""Elfenbein" ( as Elf also means "eleven" and "elf" in English ) and, perhaps incorrectly, I always think of "ivory" when I read about Elphinstone, a white ivory chess piece.

 

In her book on Pale Fire, Priscilla Meyer calls attention to the link bt. Iris Acht , the number 8 and a dentist. Later she mentions another dentist, "Dr. Ahlert with a German accent".  I remember that the number 18 ( Achtzehn ) also brings up two other German words. Zahn ( plural Zähne) sounds almost similar to Zehn (10), at least to unpracticed ears. "Acht" (8) takes us to "Alert, Attention with a German accent."

I shall now bring up an excerpt from Morgenstern's (Christian Morgenstern, 1871)  "Die Galgenlieder"  where he makes puns with the number "Elf" (11) inventing a "Midnight-Elf" ( or a "Twelve-Eleven", "Der Zwölf-Elf").

I include him  not just for the fun of his lines, but because he mentions a gulping swamp, a child's cry, Poe's "Raven"nevermore and the clockwork's "left arm".