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Sunday 7 September 2008

What's in a name?

Quite a lot, says Matthew Dennison — and it’s not all good

The ONS list suggests that, in the words of the song, anything goes. Lucy, Sophie, Emily, Thomas, Oliver and Charlie are perennially popular. Old-fashioned parlourmaids’ names — Evie, Lily and Ruby — are enjoying a vogue. But in case this all suggests the sort of rosy nostalgia for our island past that successive governments determinedly assure us we mustn’t feel, there’s a strong smattering of modish, celebrity-influenced names — Cruz, Harrison and Leona — proof that, in popular culture, America still rules OK.

In respect of names, the royal family remains resolutely representative. William has been the Telegraph’s first choice for boys since 2001. Charles and Harry appear in both lists, as does James, the latest choice of Edward and Sophie, who themselves feature in both lists. The Telegraph girls list also includes Beatrice. Thumbs up to the Queen, who must take some credit for Elizabeth making the top 50 every year since the Forties.

At the end of the day, it comes down to choice, association and allegiance, and all the old clichés ring true. Evangelical Christians boost the prominence of biblical names Noah, Joshua and Jesse (so far it’s a no-show by Rod). Catholics love Mary. Middle-class academics still give birth to Ptolemys and Lydias, thereby restricting the pool of potential schools safely available to them. Chav parents spawn Tylers, Bradleys and Cheyennes, ditto. There will always be an arty type who saddles her daughter with Apple, the Noughties equivalent of Peaches. And the Sitwells continue to fly the flag for patrician insouciance by keeping faith with Osbert.

Spare a thought for an endangered species. At one level, terminal decline is far advanced. Whither those solid-sounding, middle-of-the-roads monikers of yesteryear: Susan, Jane, Peter, Julian, Richard and Anne? What would Enid Blyton do were she writing today? Or is she the cause of the rot?

I asked Bendor Grosvenor about living with a name that I suspected had been... um... tricky at prep school. Bendor, or Bend ’Or, is Norman French for a heraldic symbol associated with the Grosvenors, as well as the name of a racehorse and that high-living Duke of Westminster who got up to no good with Coco Chanel. His reply cheered me. It was on the pretext of forming a Union of Strangely Named People that he first secured the telephone number of his fiancée Edíte. Way to go, Aeneas.

Matthew Dennison’s The Last Princess: The Devoted Life of Queen Victoria’s Youngest Daughter is published in Phoenix paperback.

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