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Monday 7 July 2008

What's in a name?

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

On a day of sultry heat, a uniformed health visitor stood in our London sitting-room. Around her feet lapped the detritus of a new baby — and a small, unruly dog. Fondly she surveyed the dog. ‘What is the dog’s name?’ she asked. ‘Ludo,’ we replied. Belatedly she addressed the squalling infant. ‘And what is the baby’s name?’ ‘Aeneas.’ There was a pause. She sucked her teeth audibly. ‘Pity you used up Ludo on the dog.’

She left and we uttered what would become a familiar cry in those early days: ‘What have we done?’

Names provoke reactions. Scarcely out of romper suits, we learn the importance of first impressions. But the wrong — or the right — name can create a first impression before the impression itself. Imagine arriving at an interview for corporate finance with a name like Honeysuckle. Is there a single actuary, accountant or tax analyst out there called Sacheverell? ‘They fuck you up, your mum and dad,’ bleated Philip Larkin. In his case, I can’t see the problem. Philip is hardly criminal as a moniker.

The answer, of course, is that there are very few people called Honeysuckle or Sacheverell. But it’s hard to escape a suggestion of predestination. Hedging our bets from the outset, we heaped names on Aeneas’s tiny baby head, salving our consciences by offering him the maximum number of alternatives. Parents commit worse crimes against their children than naming them after a legendary epic hero, but I admit that The Aeneid isn’t the happiest aspect of many people’s school lives.

Annually, the Office of National Statistics and the Daily Telegraph publish lists of the most popular names nationwide, culled on the one hand from the registration of births, on the other from the births announcements of the paper’s social pages. There is inevitably a divergence. Both throw up eccentricities. In the ONS boys list, the higher than average birth rate among British Muslims accounts for Mohammed and its variants coming in second (despite Muslims making up only 3 per cent of the population); there can be no accounting for the prominence at number 32 of the American Jayden. For the 13th year running, Jack remains the first choice for boys nationwide.

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