I once asked Will Wright where the SimCity 2000 cheat codes "PORN" "TIPS" "GUZZ" "ARDO" came from.
He said they were four-letter halves of eight-letter silly names he saw in the phone book! Mr. Porntips, and Mrs. Guzzardo.
And of course "CASS" is the name of his daughter, Cassidy.
So yeah, the dude spends some of his time looking through phone books for silly names, what's the big deal? Who among us can't say they haven't done the exact same thing? ;)
I used to do this at the beginning of a game as a kid, because the earthquakes were pretty harmless without buildings to knock down. You'd just load up on cash, then start building!
The word was "BRIBE", and you could get away with it (typically) twice. Around the third time your city would be devastated by a massive earthquake.