What's in a name? More than meets the critical eye
PAUL JOHNSON
Spare a thought for the innocent members of the enormous bin Laden family. If they stay put, they are pointed at; if they move across frontiers, they are prime objects of suspicion. Should they change their name? If so, they join a vast procession of people, led by our royal families (from Wettin to Windsor), who did so to avoid opprobium of one kind or another. Among name changes are families once called Nasty, Crust (or Crusty), Pigges and Hoggs. People from the North whose surname ends in -botham or -bottom are particularly sensitive. Actually, according to a book I have been reading, Family Names and Family History, by David Hey, published last year by Hambledon, 'Bottom' is in origin a place name — thus Shufflebottom is near Bury — not a physical description, like Strongintharm. But you can't go around explaining things like that all your life, can you? You have to do something. So the writer Phyllis Bottom, who, as a girl, lived in my village, Over Stowey (her father was the vicar), added an `e' and pronounced it Botome. In surnames, 'bent' stands for posterior. So Broadbent is Bigarse and Smallbent the reverse. But people don't know this, so there's no need to change.
Posh pronunciation, of the Mainwearing/Mannering type, helps. Thus Angela Brazil, to avoid jokes about nuts, pronounced it Brazzle. Yell becomes Yale. Shout Shut, and Gargle Gargell. Many seemingly vulgar names have more felicitous origins. Thus Belcher does not signify, and never did, exgurgitations. It is of French origin and meant 'fair-faced'. I wish poor old Muriel B., who ran the Colony Club during its golden age, could have known this before she died. Equally Burp comes from Burpitt, another place name.
The numerous Deaths have tried to solve the problem by writing it De'Ath or D'Aeth, helped by an explanation in Burke's Peerage, which derives it from Aeth in Flanders. But, Mr Hey says, This claim is not backed up by any evidence.' He says the earlier forms were Deth or Deeth, meaning a maker of tinder, and that the right pronunciation is Deeth. But all this is recondite and not very credible. 'I say, funny name, Death. How do you pronounce it?"Well, Deeth, actually [feeble laugh].' Deeth like teeth, eh? Ha Ha."Yes, it means a maker of tinder.' 'Really? Pull the other one, Doctor.' Names can make a lot of difference to fortune. Mrs Simpson, who captured the infatuated Edward VIII, was the
daughter of Teackle Wallis Warfield. He wanted her to take his name in toto. Imagine having Teackle as a Christian name! The mother objected, but compromised by having her called Bessiewallis Warfield. Once she was old enough to know the way of the world, Bessiewallis insisted on dropping the 'Bessie'. As either Teacklewallis or Bessiewallis, would Mrs S. ever have caught the royal eye? Incidentally, the German for Samson in the Old Testament is Simson. Once you have read in a programme note 'Tod des Simson, dann sagte Delilah an Simson, "Simson, was willst du?" ' it's hard to take the story seriously. It's the same with the Dutch version of Hamlet, where the dread line spoken by the paternal ghost becomes 'Omlet, Omlet, dies is dein Feyder's spooker I owe these bits of information to Geoffrey Maidan's delightful Notebooks, a volume I have turned over so repeatedly that it is falling to bits (it is out of print, too). Maidan was particularly interested in surnames, and among curious ones he noted are Leatherbarrow. Ballhatchet, Trampleasure and Torn Sibby. Now why did Mr and Mrs Sibby call their son Tom?
Why, for that matter, did Coleridge, when he decided to run away from Cambridge and join the cavalry, enlist in the name of Trooper Silas Tomkyns Comberbatch? His own name meant 'charcoal ridge' but he gave no explanation for his nom de guerre. Oddly enough, Comberbatch, a village in Cheshire, gave its name to a family which migrated to Barbados, proliferating and acquiring many slaves, whose descendants, migrating in turn, have made this unusual name quite common among West Indians here. Then there is the case of Kipling. His father, an artist, came from a family of farmers and craftsmen around Kipling, a village in the North Riding of Yorkshire. His genius son was called Joseph, but the father had the inspiration to add the name of a beautiful lake in Staffordshire that he had painted and admired; I knew it too, as a child, and wanted to be called Rudyard. It suited young Kipling admirably, and helped to make him an imaginative writer. I don't know why his friend Haggard was called Rider. It was the name of his father, descended from a line of East Anglian squires, He was also called Henry but, like Kipling and his Joseph, discarded it and insisted on being Rider. In both cases the names were perfect for writers who, though of vastly unequal talent, specialised in the remote and exotic. And so their millions of readers felt: hence the affectionate couplet, 'When the Rudyards stop their Kipling/And the Haggards cease to ride'. Charlotte, Emily and Anne were also fortunate that their father, following Nelson's choice in calling himself Duke of Brontë, made this the definitive spelling of his name that had hitherto been Branty, Brantee, Brunty and Pruntee.
Not surprisingly, perhaps, Haggard, Kipling and the Brontë sisters were brilliant at picking names for their characters. You can't say that of all the Victorian storytellers. Thackeray could hit on superbly apposite names when he chose — what could be better than Becky Sharp? — but often slid into cardboard-character names, like the Marquess of Steyne. Worse, some of his admirers followed him. Surtees damaged his best novel by calling its anti-hero Soapy Sponge; his revised version of the type, Facey Romford, is much better. Worse still, Trollope, a great novelist, used this lazy trick constantly (Dr Rerechild, the Rev. Mr Quiverful) though he was well capable of designing ideal names. What is more suggestive than the Rev. Obadiah Slope, the cunning, ambitious bishop's chaplain in Barchester Towers? And Dr Proudie is good too, especially for Mrs Proudie. I used to think that Dickens's names were extravagant. Now I know better. Smallweed is an inspired name for the horrible family that infests Bleak House. Inspector Bucket is well chosen, too. For overbearing lawyers, what could be more apt than Mr Tulkinghorn and Mr Jaggers (we will forget about Buzfuz, an error of youth)? Harold Skimpole has the touch of genius too, as does Uriah Heep and his nemesis Wilkins Micawber.
A century ago, and more, people often changed their name to meet the wishes of a benefactor who had left them an estate and did not wish his surname to become extinct: hence the doubleor triple-barrel, now becoming rare (though it does not explain the surname of Lord Cardigan's mistress, Miss Horsey de Horsey). One instance of this was Henry Campbell, who was left a property in Kent and became Campbell-Bannerman. He thought a lot about names and the propensity of cash to adhere to the right one. When prime minister, he used to tell the story of a boy at school, A.B. Abbott, who was surprised and delighted to receive a £5 note from an elderly aunt 'as a reward, dear boy, for coming top of the list'. 'The moral,' said Sir Henry, in his Perthshire accent, 'is, when ye get your peerage, move up the alphabet.'
Previous page
