Real Jack Frost is cool with teasing he gets

Every winter, he braces for a flurry of comments.

Occasionally a harried salesclerk will ring up his purchases without noticing his name.

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Jack Frost III of Atlanta gets a lot of gags, especially this time of year, but he doesn’t get his nose out of joint.

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But that’s as rare as a blizzard in July.

Most stop in mid-transaction, pause for comic effect and quip, “How appropriate,” when Jack Frost III hands over his debit card.

Snarky salesclerks are just the tip of the iceberg for Frost, who’s had to weather a lifetime of “Jack Frost nipping at your nose” jokes.

To make matters worse, the 59-year-old Atlantan grew up in the frigid Northeast.

“I got teased by the girls a lot growing up, as you can imagine,” he says.

Back then, there was also a Jack Frost Sugar company with a popular elfin character on its package. The confection added another coating of bad puns to his youth.

But his grandfather embraced the name, and so did his father.

So Jack Frost III was proud to pass it on to his son, the late Jack Frost IV.

“I always knew there would be a fourth,” he says. “I never questioned it, and my wife never questioned it. It was a family tradition.”

In folklore, “Jack Frost” is the spritely embodiment of winter weather. In pop culture, the name pops up as a movie title, a comic book character, one of Bob Dylan’s pseudonyms and the name of a rock band.

“Someone gave me their CD once, but I’m not sure I ever listened to it,” he says.

Jack Frost III is part of a light dusting of Jack Frosts across metro Atlanta — along with a Mary Christmas, a Candace Kane and a mix of other seasonal monikers.

The name, he says, is not as uncommon as one might think.

“When I started traveling around the country for my job,” Frost says, “I’d always look in the phone book for Jack Frosts and pretty much found them everywhere.”

He even came face-to-face with a fellow Jack Frost when he stopped by a Cobb County restaurant he’d never visited before.

When he introduced himself at the front desk to say he was meeting a friend there, “You’re not Jack Frost!” came the reply.

He was then escorted to a table occupied by another Jack Frost, a used-car salesman and well-known regular at the establishment. They gave each other a warm welcome.

That’s the thing about the name. Nobody forgets it.

“My dad was a businessman who would play on his name all the time with acquaintances and make a joke out of it, and that way they’d always remember him,” says Frost, a director of photography for television shows.

“And I think it’s actually helped me with my professional career because the name is memorable,” he says. “If there’s a TV show I’ve worked on, people might remember my name before they remember the producer’s.”

Then there was the time he worked with a colleague whose last name was Tingle.

“We used to get a lot of fun out of that,” he says. “Whenever we’d introduce ourselves, it was Tingle and Frost.”

It’s enough to make one shiver.