'what kind of a name is "Rudyard" anyway? Were they having a laugh or what?'
.,,.
He was actually called Joseph Rudyard Kipling, and used Rudyard professionally, presumably as being more distinctive. I expect it was a family name from somewhere back one side or the other [like my Grosvenor] — often given as a middle name, & can be used professionally: I adopted mine into my byline when I started reviewing for The Times & The Guardian back in the 1960s to avoid confusion with Michael Meyer, well-known as translator of and authority on Scandinavian playwrights Ibsen & Strindberg.

≈M≈