What's in a name?
Benny Green
What's in a name? Nothing, according to William Shakespeare, although he would no doubt have sung another song had his Parents labelled him Clunge, Morbidia or Plasticine. In any case, the fact that Shakespeare believed devoutly in the evocative power of names is proved by the obvious care with which he concocted that firm of crooked solicitors, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. The great names of fiction have about them such an air of inevitable rightness that it always comes as a nasty shock to be reminded that Conan Doyle very nearly cnristened the world's greatest detective Sherringford.
Everyman's Dictionary of Fictional Characters (£2.50) reveals some odd facts, for instance that the commonest initial letter for fictitious names is ' B,' rarvYing from Mr B anti-hero of Richardson's Pamela, to Stephen Bywater in Mrs Henry Wood's The Channings; and that the least popular is of course 'X,' with only three ent• :es. Fher Xavier in Hervey Allen's Anthony Adverse, Xit the dwarf in Ainsworth's The Tower of London, and . . . well, who? A clue is that he comes from one of the world's most famous books.
The first name in the dictionary is Aaron in Titus Andronicus, and the last Zu-Zu, from Ouida's Under Two Flags, and if you think all this information is recondite, I can only say that the dictionary is one of those books, a time-waster, a kind of celestial telephone directory with the numbers missing, and a fascinating revelation as to the talent authors have for christening their children.
At a rough guess, I should say around 25,000 names have been included, some of them so bizarre that it really is a great surprise that some enterprising publisher's reader did not put a pencil through them. and send them back where they came from with a request for something reasonable. Among the persistent offenders are Robert Louis Stevenson (Dr Gotthold Hohenstocknitz), Charles Kingsley (Vindex Brimblecombe), George Eliot (Theophrastus Such) and J. M. Barrie (Jimsy Duthie). But for sheer discordant lunacy when it comes to naming his creations, all the prizes must go to Sir Walter Scott, who indulged in such outlandish nomenclature that if someone were to recite the best examples aloud from a stage, the only possible audience response would be " Gezuntheit! " Where did Sir Walter find them, these ghastly ghosties with their crazy names, Chattenach MacG!Ilie, Habakkuk GilfiUan. Ole,r'us Schinderhausen, Sigismond. Biederman, Young Gilliewackit, Maugrabin Hayraddin, Habakkuk Mucklewrath, Saunders Mucklebackit, Hal Schreckenwald, Rudolp of Donnerhugel, Williewald of Geierstein, gloomily clanking their polysyllabic chains through the corridors of the historical romance?
Naturally I have complaints as to whd has been included and who left out, but as this kind of carping is half the fun of possessing a dictionary of this kind nobody need take offence. For instance, any readers who passed this way last week will not need to be told how upset I was to see that while 0. Henry gets no fewer than seventy-seven entries, Damon Runyon gets none, and that while Lady Markby of An Ideal Husband is included, Messrs Markby, Markby and Markby of The Importance of Being Earnest are not.
There is one other omission, and he might have enriched the dictionary immeasurably. I refer to Beachcomber, without any question the most original inventor of fictitious names in this epoch. It might be claimed that strictly speaking his innovations are not fiction, to which I would respond by claiming that they are certainly not factual, and that in any case, rules should always be bent to accomodate such magnificent neologisms as Amaninter Axling, Guttergorm Guttergormpton, Badly Oronparser, Churm Rincewind, Cleveland Zackhouse, Edeledel Edel, Scorpion de Rooftrouser and Frums Gillygottle.
Finally, it occurs to me that there may be people who think that their knowledge is broad enough and deep enough to enable them to dispense with such a dictionary. So be it, but before they stake their claim, it may be as well if they proved their omniscience by answering a few simple questions. For instance, I might ask them to remember
Who invented Sidney Carton? How would you describe .007?
The answer to the first question is apparently Angela Thirkell (you spell the Dickens Carton 'Sydney '); the answer to the second is "a locomotive engine in Kipling's The Day's Work" (there is no point before the number of James Bond's identity). Before I forget, the third of the three characters whose names begin with ' X ' is Xury, the ship's boy in Robinson Crusoe. If I were you, I'd buy the dictionary.
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