Choose a Name to Last a Lifetime

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Last weekend we decided to spoil ourselves and go out for lunch. At a table close to us were two mums, one had a baby boy and a little girl who looked about two, the other mum had a boy aged about two and a half. At first as I glanced across at the little girl it reminded me of when my children were little and all the paraphernalia we had to drag around even on a simple shopping trip. I loved it when the children were small, but I wouldn’t have the stamina to do it all over again. The little girl looked cute but I soon realised that looks can be deceptive, she behaved very badly and I marvelled at her lung capacity and the piercing quality of her voice. It is incredible that such a little person could be responsible for so much noise. When the mum spoke to the little girl I realised that she had tempted fate and was now reaping the rewards – the child was called Angel! This seems to be quite a popular name these days, I have come across 3 girls called Angel and all three were tiny terrors, more suited to horns and a tail than wings.

My mother once advised me that names should be chosen to last and before lumbering a child with a name you should think how it sounds with the prefix aunt or uncle. Wise advice, unfortunately I forgot to apply it when choosing my son’s name, he is not impressed by the prospect of becoming ‘Uncle Sam’ one day! I think some parents are unwise in the names they choose for their children and a few are downright cruel. There was a boy at Emily’s school called Aladdin, poor kid, it was no surprise that he had problems.

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I met someone a few years younger than me (I was born in 1960’s) called Godfrey, his childhood must have been a real struggle with an old man’s name, he seemed to have survived by being eccentric. I think the worse name I have come across belonged to a chap born in the 1970’s who was called Heathcliffe. He was a bit of a rough diamond and I often wondered how he acquired his unusual name as I couldn’t imagine that his mum was an Emily Bronte fan. Eventually I was able to ask him about it, he was the youngest in a huge family and his mum had run out of boy’s names, so she chose the name of a character in a film that she had watched shortly before giving birth. Some names are cute for a baby or toddler but are less suitable when possessed by a grown man in his early thirties. I knew the young man in question only as Chris, but when I had to assist him with some form filling the awful truth was revealed. The poor chap had been saddled with the name Christopher Robin!

The choice of names rarely meets with the wholehearted approval of the recipient. My own children claim to be mentally scarred by the names they were given. Emily, my older daughter quite likes her first name, but there were seven girls called Emily in her class at senior school. Each was known as Emily with the first letter of her surname, before long my daughter was known to everyone as MJ and the name has remained with her ever since. My son had a spy phase and changed his name to Flash when he was about 8, he changed his name on all his school books and refused to answer to anything else, his teacher was not amused!

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One last word on the subject of names, be careful what your children call their pets. At our vets they call you in to the surgery using the name of the pet and your surname. It was bad enough when the vet called out ‘Wonder Woman’ and I had to stand up and walk across the waiting room carrying a hamster, but the worse moment was when I took my friend’s dog to the vet, foolishly she had booked him in using his real name so I was very red faced when the vet called out Spliff!!