The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
What’s in a name?
With the new royal baby commanding the headlines, Helen Brown, the woman with the plainest by-line The Courier, names names
AROSE by any other name would smell as sweet but at least if you call it a rose, you don’t have to go round explaining what it means, where you got it from, how you spell it and why you decided to inflict it on the unsuspecting recipient in the first place. Such is the modern way of choosing names for babies, some of which come perilously close to child abuse.
Of course, what you call a child inevitably says more about the namer than the namee. I am old enough to remember the mini-furore when Princess Anne decided to call her daughter Zara. One Katie Hopkins, whose status as an Apprentice participant apparently qualifies her as a social commentator and contrarian, recently reduced the winsome Holly Willoughby to spluttering disbelief and called down upon herself the wrath of Philip Schofield and a raft of This Morning viewers when she suggested that certain names give away class, character and characteristics and that it’s inevitable their bearers will be judged and found wanting.
Snobbery apart, it’s hard to say that she’s wrong. Coming across a Chardonnay or a Tyson activates a level of perception and whether we like it or not, we’re all guilty of jumping to conclusions.
The Romans reckoned that “nomen est omen” – name is destiny – and although we might like to think of ourselves as open-minded and non-judgmental, we still react to what we think names indicate about class, education and origins.
Perhaps in the competitive job market, a William will always win out over a Wayne and a Charlotte go further than a Chantelle.
Apparently, if you are called Lee (first name as opposed to surname, I presume), you have a greater statistical likelihood of ending up behind bars. It’s also claimed in relatively reputable studies that people are influenced in life decisions and choices, perhaps completely unconsciously, by the name they are given.
Could this be true or just another way to pigeon-hole people and keep them in their place?
There may be a bit of a current run on Alices, Mabels and Florences, James, Thomases and Georges but the list of celebrity lunacy is ever-lengthening, so much so that those old classics, Dweezil and Moon Unit Zappa, Fifi Trixibelle Geldof and her sisters or Apple and Moses Paltrow Martin, look like positive models of restraint and quiet good taste in comparison with more flamboyant monstrosities such as Moxie CrimeFighter (daughter of magician Penn Jillette) and Pilot Inspektor, son of comedian Jason Lee.
Public taste doesn’t always follow royal example. Popular culture is more influential than ever, with Harry (as in Styles as opposed to the Royal Uncle) and Isabella (from the Twilight saga) leading the way. There were one or two extra Dianas born after the late Princess of Wales came to prominence but I would wager there was a much stronger rash of Kylies.
Michael Jackson famously allowed his first son to take on the mantle of Prince Michael (obviously not realising that the name was already taken) and liked it so much that he called his second son the same thing, with Blanket as a cover story. His brother Jermaine, however, has them all beat. His son is called Jermajesty. Somehow I suspect that no-one in Kensington Palace is taking notes.
Some of those who suffered in earlier eras have grown up and survived to tell the tale. In a kind of nicely reversed rock ’n’ roll rebellion, Keith Richards’ daughter Dandelion very sensibly insists on being called Angela, while Zowie Bowie is now a very successful film director under the no-frills name of Duncan Jones. And whatever became of Rolan Bolan?
Of course, in Britain and America, you can call yourself or your child anything you like but other nations, from France to Scandinavia, China to the Antipodes, have strict laws about the outlandish/offensive. Germany even has an official department, the Standesamt, to attempt to standardise names.
Recently, a young Icelandic girl called Blaer (it means Light Breeze) had to sue to have it recognised because it wasn’t one of her nation’s 1,853 approved female names.
In Sweden, Google was accepted without a murmur but there was a bit more fuss over Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbbb11116. Pronounced Albin. Although that old First Nation name, Cat Walked Over the Computer While I Was Typing seems a more appropriate translation.
In New Zealand, Fish & Chips, Sex Fruit, Satan and Adolf Hitler (wonder what the Standesamt would have made of that?) were rejected out of hand but somehow, Number 16 Bus Shelter, Tallulah Does the Hula from Hawaii and Benson and Hedges (for twins) snuck in under the wire. Makes you grateful for North West and Tu Morrow. These are real names. I blame the parents.