In the comments to this posting, Mark asked a question that made Figaro think a little harder about that cruel-play-on-somebody’s-name thing.  I’ll stand by my paronomasia, but you might better call it an ADNOMINATIO.  See the “Ask Figaro” section for details.

 The wise Figarist might ask: Who cares?  What’s interesting to us isn’t the name of these techniques, necessarily, but the techniques themselves.  Figures show us a delightful variety of ways to ruin someone’s self-esteem and make people associate him with an embarrassing or evil attribute.  You can find words that sound like the person’s name, or play off the literal meaning of the term (“Bush” is a fine example), or assign a new, belittling name, or assign an opposite name that only highlights their flaw (calling a bald Stooge “Curly”), or use a descriptive phrase instead of the proper noun (“She Who Must Be Obeyed,” “He Who Must Not Be Named”), and so on and so on.

 It’s a big, beautiful, humiliating figurative world out there.

 Fig.