What’s in a Name?

I love searching out names and go gaga with delight when newspapers and popular magazines have revised the old chestnut of what were the year’s most popular names and a spate of Rebeccas, Britneys, and Sarahs, Jacks, Joshuas came up. Even the good old-fashioned Victoria – or the stylish Tori for short has risen again. Not too many Kylies or Nicoles though.

From my little radio station we have two new mums who have named their babies Isaac and Zac.

So! What’s new? We’ve been following a trend that’s centuries old, that of naming our babies after family members, saints, personalities and events.

Right at the start of the last century (20th) when the Anglo-Boer War was in full swing, there were babies christened after famous military officers, there were heaps of Kitcheners and Roberts’ – two of that period’s most famous generals. Edward, Alice, Alexandra and a gaggle of Georges were top of the list.

One music hall comic even devised a song wherein he named the baby after every British and Boer general plus some battle sites. The Music Hall even ran a competition for would-be performers as to who could recite the whole of the song without a hitch.

One guinea ($2.20) was the prize.

The twenties gave us Elizabeths; the thirties, Margarets, after the princess; Clarks (that’s Gable, not Kent) and, Shirleys, Miss Temple of course.

There are scads of Peters, but not too many with the original meaning of Peter, Rock.

In the 15th century, William Shakespeare wrote:

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose. By any other name would smell as sweet.”

Master Will left a legacy of some wonderful quotes, a lot becoming clichés, mores the pity and regrettably so did the above.

What was he thinking when he wrote Romeo and Juliet.

It’s a sure bet that as he mulled over suitable names for his main characters, the names Fred or Gertrude never even made it to the first draft.

Fred and Gertrude? No way. It would have been laughed out of Ye Olde Globe Theatre, even though the said Gertrude may have been as pretty as a rose.

So Romeo and Juliet it was. Names suitable for a ten-tissue tragedy.

The rose, queen of flowers, would lose its appeal were it called, let’s say, a pumpkin.