Don’t dare call me sir.. Call me Sir
Beyoncé, the popular musician and No. 1 reason for journalists to learn how to do accents on their keyboards, has shared a picture on social media of her fairly new twins.
They seem to be appealing small children, much like several other month-old children in their bearing and demeanour. It is not for us at Dave to pass comment on them.
We are unqualified. We are not middle-aged women on a bus. This is not Small Child Review Monthly.
But what we are good at here is names. We understand what it is like to be lumbered with a confusing name.
And while Rumi is a perfectly acceptable, if fairly standard-issue, popstar child name, we cannot help but feel Beyoncé and her husband, Jay Z, are storing up trouble for her brother, Sir.
What happens when Sir starts to venture out in public? Picture the scene, 14-year-old Sir Carter is minding his own business in WH Smith’s, leafing through a copy of Total Carp, when suddenly he hears a shop assistant say: “Excuse me, sir.”
“I wasn’t doing anything!” he would blurt out. “I was going to buy it.”
“No, sir, I didn’t mean you, sir. I was referring to this gentleman who has unaccountably left behind his family-sized bar of Dairy Milk at the counter.”
“Then why did you specifically address me by name? Also, how do you know my name?”
And then later in life, perhaps he is a little more cocky, as young men can be. Perhaps he is waiting to enter a nightclub in Neasden. “Excuse me, sir,” the bouncer/doorman would say. “Can I see your ID?”
“Why do you need to see my ID?” the offspring of two of the most influential pop stars of the 21 century would ask. “You clearly know who I am, as you have used my name. And, by the way, I consider that extremely offensive. You call me sir, not Sir.”
And what happens if, even later in life, he takes British citizenship, distinguishes himself in public life, say, by managing Manchester United, or becoming a top-level civil servant, and receives a knighthood? Then he would be Sir Sir Carter.
It’s just a recipe for confusion. They should have just called him Dave.