The gunman of The Man with the Golden Gun borrowed his last name from George Ambrose Scaramanga, who attended Eton with Fleming. By most accounts the real Scaramanga was a mild, studious man with no villainous streak at all. His grandson has said the family took it well and that Scaramanga himself rather enjoyed telling people a Bond villain shared his name.

There’s a second, more recent theory about where Scaramanga and Blofeld both came from. Tom Blofeld, nephew of cricket commentator Henry Blofeld, has claimed his father recognized a boy named Scaramanga in an old school photograph from Sunningdale Prep, in the same class as a young Blofeld. According to this account, both names came from prefects who bullied Fleming’s own nephew, and Fleming used the novels to get a bit of payback on the boy’s behalf.