Benoni, SA

Trivial, you want trivial? Watching the mediocre Woody Allen movie "Celebrity", wondering who the familiar woman was playing the supermodel character, checking the IMDB and seeing it's Charlize Theron, noticing she was born in Benoni, South Africa. This just to add another layer to the popular trivia questions about the origin of one of the most unusual names in chess literature. "Which Oscar-winning actress was born in a town with the name of a 1.d4 defense..."

Benoni is the name Rachel gives her son in the Old Testament and means "child of my sorrow" in Hebrew. Genesis 35:18, "And it came to pass, as her soul was in departing, (for she died) that she called his name Benoni: but his father called him Benjamin." Maybe we should call it the Benjamin Defense? Nah, Joel would get a fat head about it.

According to the ever-essential Oxford Companion to Chess (of which I've accumulated around seven copies): Its association in chess comes from the title of a German manuscript by an Aaron Reinganum published in 1825. It was the title of a book of opening research, mostly on gambits, that included analysis of 1.d4 c5. But the name Benoni didn't refer to any of the lines contained in the book. The author worked on his chess when he was depressed, which led to the title of the book.