For Powell’s, Deb Olin Unferth interviews Stanley Crawford on the occasion of the reissue of his novel Log of the S.S. the Mrs. Unguentine.
Unferth: Where did the name Unguentine come from?
Crawford: A fairly typical experience for me upon hearing or seeing a somewhat striking name in print is to repeat it silently in a sort of involuntary way, to the point often of annoyance. Unguentine was probably one of those names. I didn’t realize or remember until much later that it was also a brand name.
I wrote up some notes on the book in 2003.