I have never been a big fan of my own name. The name ‘Nigel’ has romantic origins – it means ‘dark champion’ in Celtic lore and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle titled one of his dashing medieval historical novels Sir Nigel. But by the time of my birth the name had become indelibly associated with cerebrally challenged upper-class twits with protruding teeth, and then a silly song about ‘making plans for Nigel’.
The most prominent bearers of the name during my lifetime – such as Nigels Lawson, Havers, Mansell and Kennedy – have done little to enhance its prestige. By 2022, only three Nigels were registered in the national birth statistics, and the name had become so unpopular that it is threatened with actual extinction, going the same way as such despised and dead forenames as Herbert, Cyril and Algernon.
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