Naming and Shaming

Someone I know has just had a baby. The name she has chosen for her little girl has the same effect as hanging a large placard round the child’s neck that says, ‘My parents have read classical literature.’ It also leaves the poor creature open to a childhood of teasing. When I pointed this out, her mother said, ‘Well, childhood doesn’t last forever,’ which left me completely speechless.

I’m not going to tell you what the name is that the kid’s been lumbered with (no, not Medusa), or the parents will guess it’s them I’m writing about. Instead, I will list some of the other batty names I’ve encountered, (no, not Methuselah – anyway that’s Hebrew, not classical), as a warning, or just for fun.

There was Venus Intergalactic Starchild, who I never met but whose birth certificate I sighted when I was working as a Clerk Class One in the Family Allowances section of the Department of Social Security. She must be 30 or so by now. I often wonder how life’s gone for her. There was Rebel, who I went to school with and who, when I knew her, busily lived up to her name – although it seemed to me the only way to rebel really in her circumstances was to flout her parents’ choice of name and be completely conformist and good.

There was the couple I met who had a baby girl in Australia’s bicentennial year and therefore decided to call their daughter Acacia, which is a fancy name for Wattle (‘I love the flaming wattle, the emblem of our land, you can stick it in a bottle or hold it in your hand’). And last, but by no means least, there was the woman my brother insists he overheard in the supermarket the other day: ‘Maverick,’ she yelled at the small boy with her, as he ran down the aisles causing havoc, ‘Maverick, why can’t you just behave.’