13 August 2015
What your name says about you
by Lynda Goetz
What’s in a name? A great deal, actually. Let’s just take surnames to start with. These can, as most people know, indicate many things, such as where your ancestors came from; what their occupations were; what they looked like or indeed their relationship with others. For anyone interested, and genealogy has become something of a fascination these days, there are now available on the internet not only lists of, for example, Saxon, Anglo-Norman and Huguenot surnames, but explanations of what most of these names meant and how to start researching your own family name.
Surnames were not properly a feature of this country until the Normans introduced them after 1066. Prior to that time, communities were small enough to know others simply by their first name or nickname with perhaps reference to their trade, their appearance, their father or where they lived. By around 1400 the use of surnames had become generally established through England and Lowland Scotland and by the mid-16th Century the Welsh had adopted the same system.
Many would love to think that they have illustrious ancestors and it is very easy to fall into the trap of thinking that because you share a name with a famous character from history you must be somehow linked. Sadly that is not often the case. There are nevertheless, some fascinating research studies which show, among other things, that people with Norman names (e.g. Darcy, Lacy , Glanville) are still, on average, 10% wealthier than other Britons nearly 1,000 years after the Norman invasion (2011 Gregory Clark, Professor of Economics, University of California).
The Huguenots, who fled France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1635 established Catholicism as the state religion of France, are responsible for some quite distinguished and familiar names in this country. The author, Louis de Bernière, for example, has a classic Huguenot surname. The Courtauld name, famous to most of us because of the gallery, was another name which came from the same source, as was Cazenove, a name familiar for a long time to all those who worked in the City before the stockbroking and banking firm was swallowed up in 2009 by JP Morgan.
Of course, many more people, have more common surnames such as Smith, Slater or Cooper, indicating trades which were prevalent around the time surnames were being adopted throughout the country. Names ending in ‘-man’ or ‘-er’ usually indicated a trade as well, with the derivation of such names as Chapman (shopkeeper) and Crowther (stringed instrument player) being less than obvious to modern ears. Place names were another common way of creating surnames, perhaps indicating that people had moved from a town (e.g. Berkeley), a county (e.g. Hampshire) or even a country (e.g. Moore or Blackmore from Morocco). Other surnames derived from features of the landscape, such as Hill, Greenwood or Bourne. Nicknames too played their part and names such as Slowman or Blunt (fair-haired) clearly make reference to physical attributes of the people concerned, whilst names like Goodchild or Kennard (royal-brave) make reference to moral ones and some, such as Puttock (greedy) are disparaging. Add to this ancient English mix the plethora of foreign surnames which have trickled and then flooded into the language over the last hundred years or so and the research into surnames could be a full-time occupation.
So much for surnames, but what about the names we are given when we are born; the names which we used to call Christian names, but which now in our multicultural society tend to be called simply ‘given’ names? What do they tell others about us? Possibly more than many of us would like to admit. Firstly, they probably indicate our age, or at least roughly which generation we fit into. For example, how many, say, 10 year-olds do you know who are called Edith or Ivy? Come to that, how many 40 or even 50-year olds do you know with those names or flower names like Marigold or Violet? You might just find some 80 or 90 year-olds or some pictures of great aunts in an old photo album with these names. Perhaps they are due for a revival? You might find 60-year olds called Susan or Gillian but are rather less likely to find 20 or 30 year-olds with those names. The names Francesca and Alexander or Alexandra are very prevalent amongst those in their twenties. Years ago, when one mother called out from the side-lines of the rugby pitch ‘Alexander, your shoe laces are undone!’ three 11-year olds bent over to check their trainers! Alexander has always been a fairly popular name, ever since the Macedonian of that name rampaged his way across vast areas of the known world. Another name common among the Macedonian upper classes at the time, Ptolemy, however, has never caught on in this country, in spite of the illustrious holders of the name, although I have recently come across one young man saddled with it.
How would you deal with a name like Ptolemy? It is a pretty demanding sort of name. Apart from being the name of all the kings of Egypt between 323 BC and 30 BC, when Egypt became a province of Rome, the other bearer of the name is a Greco-Egyptian polymath who was a mathematician, astronomer, geographer and astrologer who lived in Alexandria in the second century AD. Rather like Johnny Cash’s song about ‘A Boy Named Sue’ I suspect that anyone named Ptolemy in the 21st century might have a bit of a tough time. Perhaps I am wrong, but I have a sneaking feeling that boys cope less well with being landed with exotic names than girls. I am not sure that most boys feel too happy about standing out of the crowd with a name that is not a straightforward, John, Charles, William or James, whereas many girls, particularly, dare I say it, if they are attractive, are probably delighted to be Cassandra, Anghara, Gabriella or Demelza. I do know of two instances where boys given ‘exotic’ first names opted, as soon as they were able, to use their second and more conventional middle names.
So what else, apart from your generation, does your given name give away about you, or at least about your parents? Well, it is probably fair to say that you have to be pretty confident for yourself and your child to give them some of the extremely exotic names that certain rock stars saddle their kids with. Zowie Bowie notoriously changed his name to Duncan when he was older. The daughter of Gail and Frank Zappa was, and is, called Moon Unit Zappa and has a sibling called Dweezil. Then there’s Fifi Trixiebelle and her siblings….. anyway, you get the point. Brian and Brett, Tracey and Chardonnay definitely come from different stables from Tarquin and Jocelyn, Charlotte and Caroline. The names you give your children do not have to stay with them for life, but mostly they do not tend to throw them away and start again and those names do say more than some people realise about where they have come from and where they are going. They also in some strange way seem to tap into the ‘zeitgeist’ and, like most fashions, have their day. I do think some of those flower names are due for a come-back. Jamie Oliver seems to be leading the way in this country; having named his first daughter Poppy Honey Rose, he went on to name the next two Daisy and Petal (I always thought that was a nickname!) and in the States various celebrities seem to have latched on to names like Violet and Iris. But what about Zinnia and Hyacinth? Or is that perhaps too much of a Bouquet?
