"Is your name Conrad?"

Rumpelstiltskin.

So the name. What does it mean? Well, I was tempted to go the "Rumple-stil(t)s-kin, Rumple-steals-kin--hey! He steals kids! Get it?"-moron route but did a little research instead. The original German is Rumpelstilzchen. "Rumpel" means to jolt (or perhaps to make noise). The second part is a little tricky. "Stelze" means stilt. "Stulz" means lame--though I'm not sure I trust the source on that one (but he does tear himself in two). "Stolzem" means stolen which sounds promising, but I think that's reaching a little far with the translation. Apparently there's an ancient game still played in Germany called rumpele stilt oder der poppart, which is the obvious origin, but I couldn't find out how it's played. Do they use stilts? Do they pretend to be lame? Do they spin flax into gold and steal firstborns (a girl can hope)? Who the hell knows?

So, I'm going with "little guy that jumps around like a fool--maybe with sticks". Which is pretty much said in the the original story "a really strange man was dancing around the fire, hopping on one foot and chanting". So, that for all my looking.