Names

At some stage before this crazy week started someone mentioned names and how given names often differ from what one is called. 

My Mother was supposed to have been Christened Flora Irene. Unfortunately her Godmother Edith was so miffed at her not being named after her that she added it when asked "How do you name this child?" It, needless to say, caused a bit of a family tiff.

My father was Morris Thompson-Edwards. However my mother refused to marry a double-barrelled name so he appeared on the Marriage certificate as Morris Thompson Edwards sans hyphen.

I was named Graham Barry Edwards. My parents called me Barry but Barry Graham Edwards didn't scan. Since I was 16 I've been known by both fore-names. One of the reasons for my names was that they were not easily shortened. So my parents thought. At school I was usually Bas and in our road simply Ba. Today I'm also known as GB, Geeb and various other things some of which are completely unrelated to my given names and which I shall ignore (as I usually do).  

My brother was named Clive John Edwards and to our parents and some people from his youth, he was and is Clive. Everyone else including me and his wife and offspring only use John or CJ (so far as I know!).

The husband of one of my brother's daughters took her surname on marriage. 

My son Gaz was named Gareth Vernon Spencer Edwards and called Gareth or Gaz. Virtually no one knew his full name until he got married. In Scotland you have to recite your full given name when getting married. His contempt for his chosen names was shown when on signing the register he then signed a deed changing his name to Gareth Macrae Edwards. 

His wife was, and remains, Carol Macrae although uses the title Mrs. In Scotland the taking of the husband's surname only came into general use in the 19th Century. 

Their son is Brodie Edwards Macrae. 

I'm glad that I will never have to be researching the family history. 

However if they do then this public record, boring though it might have been to you, will be of considerable interest to the researchers.

Forms of Address

I was sure that I'd mentioned this before but it would appear not. 

There was a time when, in the UK anyway, there were fairly strict rules of address for letters. I still write a lot of letters and receive quite a few too. However I've never kept a note of all the forms of address until I went through the envelopes of my Christmas cards.

The results were interesting in that I was addressed in ten different ways:

Mr G B Edwards        26%

Graham Edwards        26%

Mr G Edwards            19%

With the final 29% being shared between

G B Edwards Esq       

Mr Graham Edwards 

Mr B Edwards             

Barry Edwards             

Graham B Edwards     

G Barry Edwards Esq  

Mr G Barry Edwards    

Any one using the 'Barry' is likely to have known me for more than 45 years. Although some on the Island do know me as Barry (which is what my wife called me) anyone who knew me directly calls me Graham, GB or Geeb (amongst various other things I shall gloss over).

As my Dad used to say "I don't care what you call me so long as it's not late for my dinner".

On Pronunciation of Names

Lee recently wrote about pronunciation and spelling in a particularly witty offering which included the following:

It’s gruelling having to read out loud the works of Russian novelists like Zhukovsky, Turgenev, Saltykov-Schedrin, Dostoyevsky, or the poets, Baratynsky, Batyushkov, Konstaninovich et al.

Leo Tolstoy is simple to pronounce, but try saying out loud continually at a rapid pace the name of his infamous heroine, Anna Karenina. Don’t even attempt those she hung around with such as Kirillovich Vronsky, Stiva Arkadyevich Oblonsky, Konstantin Dmitrievich, Sergej Ivanovich Koznyshev, Princess Ekaterina Alexandrovna Shcherbatskaya, to jumble but a few. Whew!

Why couldn’t Anna be friends with Tom Smith, Fred Brown and Jane Jones?

Strangely I have never had any problem with the Russian novels, novelists or names which I devoured voraciously as a young man/late teenager.

It reminded me of the after-dinner story Peter Ustinov used to tell of arriving (many years ago) at the Russian border with a party of British visitors. The border officials stumbled painfully over the unusual and difficult-for-a-Russuan-to-pronounce names: Jones, Smith, Chamberlain etc (and that's before one gets to the one's the Brits can't pronounce like Cholmondelly). So when they came to the last one they were utterly delighted to find a name they could pronounce easily: Ustinov.

It also reminded me of a meeting I attended many many years ago where a singularly uncontentious matter was put to the vote and one person voted against it. On being faced with querulous looks he explained that he could not face the idea of the Chariman having to try and say 'unanimously' yet again.

What's In A Name?

How important names are.  Not just to us as individuals but to marketing as well.  When I was a lad, and  long before, one of the most prestigious jewellery shops in Liverpool was Boodle and Dunthorne. Today I see that it has altered its image and has become simply Boodles.  Frankly to me Boodle and Dunthorne oozes quality and a certain 'something' but Boodles is just, well, Boodles and, frankly, could well be anything.  That's probably just me though.  

I do like the little touch whereby the BD is retained intertwined within the first O of Boodles.  The stainless steel superlambanana is rather classy too (insofar as anything quite so whimsical can be called classy).  I think, by the way, that the chap in the photos is the shop's security chap.  The days of the top-hatted doorman are gone.  You can, however, still find morning-coated, top-hatted security people at the Argyle (Jewellery store) Parade in Glasgow.

On Being Called EdwardEs

Nephew-in-law, Ian Edwards, posted on Sunday about the troubles he has with his name.  He decided when he married my niece to adopt her surname name instead of her adopting his.  However it has not been straightforward.  I've never had problems with mis-spelling of my surname although in Napier I am sometimes asked if my Edwards has a second 'e' because there is an Edwardes Road in Napier.  This has reminded me that I had written a piece some time ago and it's been lurking for a long time as a draft post.  So here it now is!

The idea for this post is not new.

Nor is it unique in its application to my name.  It could be Miller instead of Millar or Thompson instead of Thomson.

The matter was originally brought to mind by a letter I received.  The letter annoyed me.  Not by its contents but because of its address.

My name is Edwards.  But the letter was addressed to Edwardes.  I am, I confess, a little sensitive about that extra E.  When I see it stuck onto the end of my name I am conscious of an annoyance altogether disproportionate to the reality of the situation.

The Edwardeses are as good as the Edwardses.  There is nothing to choose between us.  We are all the sons of some Edward or other.  Why in heaven's name someone along the way had to stick an extra E into his name, though, I fail to understand.

It is probably pride on his part.  Just as it is pride on my part not having that E.

But whatever the origin of the variations we feel a pride attaching to our own particular form.  We feel an outrage on our names as we feel an outrage on our persons.

It was such an outrage that led to one of Robert Louis Stevenson's most angry outbursts.

An American publisher had pirated one of his books.  But it was not the theft that angered him as much as the mis-spelling of his name.  "I saw my book advertised as the work of R L Stephenson and I own I boiled."

I feel at this moment a touch of sympathy for,  or is it with, that snob Sir Frederick Thesiger.  He was addressed one day as 'Mr Smith' and the blood of all the Thesigers boiled within him.

"Do I look like a person with the name of Smith" he said and passed on.

And as the blood of all the Edwardses boils within me I ask "Do I look like and Edwardes?"

Yet I suppose one can fall in love with the name of Smith as with the name of Thesiger if it happens to be one's own.

I should like to see the reaction of Sir F E Smith if someone were to have called him Sir Frederick Thesiger.

But perhaps there is another reason for the annoyance.  To misspell a person's name is to imply that he is so obscure or negligible that you do not know how to address him and cannot take the trouble to find out.

And whether we like it or not there is something within us all which rebels at the thought that we are not even worth that much effort.

I'm Changing My Name

I have a number of Blogs (through nowhere near as many as Scriptor Senex) and use a number of different names to identify myself.  My favourite is L'homme Bizarre avec la Barbe Grise.  But I also use Geeb and Graham.  Leastways they are the one's to which I'm prepared to admit.  Anyway I have decided to amalgamate them and just call myself what most people these days call me which is GB.  It is either that or think up something short and clever and snappy.  And thinking is not really my forté.

Business Cards

The sunglasses that I'd had repaired in Heswall arrived in the post yesterday. That was fine. What struck me, though, was the Business Card that accompanied them. "Mr S Taylor". For a friendly business that appeared to me to be unduly formal and uninformative. Or have I just become too used to New Zealand where no-one would ever think of introducing themselves without including their first name? A different culture I suppose.