So, the celebrity baby naming stakes have just been ratcheted up to a new level of ridiculousness with the arrival of the Beckhams’ girl, Harper Seven. Let’s face it, the Beckhams aren’t exactly unfamiliar territory when it comes to daft monikers: Brooklyn, where the boy was conceived (too much information), Cruz (a Spanish girl’s name – for a boy?) and Romeo (Romeo, wherefore art thy sensible parents?), but this takes things to a whole new level.
Call me patronising, but I doubt that the Beckhams’ new arrival is a genuine tribute to the American writer Harper Lee – if it was, and had been a boy, there’d be a genuine risk that he’d be called Atticus Beckham, and that simply would not do.
In America there is a long and fine tradition of employing unusual names for one’s brood. Ever wondered why people have names such as ‘Hartley Johnston’ or ‘Smith Bainbridge’? Well, it’s not a conceit, rather down to an interesting practice explained by Edith Wharton, of all people, in her victorian novel The Age of Innocence. She explains that Newland Archer is called so because in American society there is a tradition of giving a boy his mother’s maiden name for his Christian name.
Equally, there is a trend in giving people spurious names in modern times, and much of it has to do with the hippy revolution. Today we have people walking the earth as a result of too many acid trips and incredibly bad judgement (viz. Moon Unit Zappa, Zowie Bowie), named after seasons (Autumn Reeser), fruit (Apple Martin), months of the year (January Jones), and even days of the week (Sunday Rose Urban). At least there is some practicality to appropriating the Gregorian calendar as a naming resource. You know where you are with a solid date.
It would take too long to list them all here, but in Great Britain we’ve adopted our own irritating monikers – and in a terribly middle-class way. I was in Queen’s Park one day, trying to do some work (bad decision – I’d forgotten the editor of Vogue lives there), and my ears were assaulted by incessant shouts of ‘Dylan! Stop pulling Saffron’s hair!’ and ‘Come here Sienna, we’re going to the organic café now to meet Jasmine and India.’ What, the plant and the country? I know NW6 is posh but it isn’t that amazing.
Of course, we all know the arguments that kids saddled with silly names experience a hard time at school – that is, unless they’re in a class with equally madly-named peers. No child wants to be different; they want to be the same as everyone else, and there’s little to support the idea that later on in life they’ll be glad they had parents who were still circling the airport in 1984. Zowie Bowie got rid of his name as soon as he could, reverting it to the more prosaic Duncan Jones.
So, in sum – if you really want to give your child a complex, call him Rover. Names shouldn’t be boring, but they shouldn’t be barking either.
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What’s in a name?
So, the celebrity baby naming stakes have just been ratcheted up to a new level of ridiculousness with the arrival of the Beckhams’ girl, Harper Seven. Let’s face it, the Beckhams aren’t exactly unfamiliar territory when it comes to daft monikers: Brooklyn, where the boy was conceived (too much information), Cruz (a Spanish girl’s name – for a boy?) and Romeo (Romeo, wherefore art thy sensible parents?), but this takes things to a whole new level.
Call me patronising, but I doubt that the Beckhams’ new arrival is a genuine tribute to the American writer Harper Lee – if it was, and had been a boy, there’d be a genuine risk that he’d be called Atticus Beckham, and that simply would not do.
In America there is a long and fine tradition of employing unusual names for one’s brood. Ever wondered why people have names such as ‘Hartley Johnston’ or ‘Smith Bainbridge’? Well, it’s not a conceit, rather down to an interesting practice explained by Edith Wharton, of all people, in her victorian novel The Age of Innocence. She explains that Newland Archer is called so because in American society there is a tradition of giving a boy his mother’s maiden name for his Christian name.
Equally, there is a trend in giving people spurious names in modern times, and much of it has to do with the hippy revolution. Today we have people walking the earth as a result of too many acid trips and incredibly bad judgement (viz. Moon Unit Zappa, Zowie Bowie), named after seasons (Autumn Reeser), fruit (Apple Martin), months of the year (January Jones), and even days of the week (Sunday Rose Urban). At least there is some practicality to appropriating the Gregorian calendar as a naming resource. You know where you are with a solid date.
It would take too long to list them all here, but in Great Britain we’ve adopted our own irritating monikers – and in a terribly middle-class way. I was in Queen’s Park one day, trying to do some work (bad decision – I’d forgotten the editor of Vogue lives there), and my ears were assaulted by incessant shouts of ‘Dylan! Stop pulling Saffron’s hair!’ and ‘Come here Sienna, we’re going to the organic café now to meet Jasmine and India.’ What, the plant and the country? I know NW6 is posh but it isn’t that amazing.
Of course, we all know the arguments that kids saddled with silly names experience a hard time at school – that is, unless they’re in a class with equally madly-named peers. No child wants to be different; they want to be the same as everyone else, and there’s little to support the idea that later on in life they’ll be glad they had parents who were still circling the airport in 1984. Zowie Bowie got rid of his name as soon as he could, reverting it to the more prosaic Duncan Jones.
So, in sum – if you really want to give your child a complex, call him Rover. Names shouldn’t be boring, but they shouldn’t be barking either.
Like this: