I’ve got a bone to pick with Richard Wiseman. Come on, Dick – what sort of name is that anyway? You are clearly a loser with a name like that.
Why the ire? According to Wiseman’s Quirkology website the two names that people think sound least successful are Lisa and, well, Brian.
This was based on that most accurate of scientific tools, a poll. (That previous statement should be in a special font type denoting irony, but there isn’t one. Why not?)
But what sort of people did he poll? I mean who could put Brian beneath the Shanes and Waynes and Kevins, or Lisa beneath Janice and Tracy? (If your name’s in there, or your nearest and dearest, don’t get angry with me – I hope I’ll show how this is meaningless.)
My suspicion is, as far as the polling goes, that people confused celebrity with success, forgetting that the whole point of celebrity (with a small C) is about being famous for not being successful at anything. Opinions of names were being influenced by awareness of ‘famous’ people.
And that brings me on to my main point – the whole exercise, I believe, is invalid, because our attitude to names is so strongly influenced by the individual people we know. I don’t know anyone called Wayne, so it’s not a name I particularly rate. When I was a teenager, I thought the name Valerie sounded like a unsuccessful and unattractive person, until I met someone called Valerie at university who was clearly (at the time) the most wonderful person in the world, and suddenly it was a name that indicated beauty, wisdom and success.
All our Dick has succeeded in doing, I suspect, is reflecting the associative groups of those polled – clearly people who didn’t mix with Lisas and Brians, or they’d know better.
Take heart, Brian. Years ago when the world was young I was compiling a table quiz and was planning a round called Brain Teasers. The problem was that whenever I typed ‘Brain’ it would come out as ‘Brian’, so I accepted the inevitable and composed a round of questions about famous people called Brian. And there were quite a few – from Brian May, the world’s most famous axe-wielding astrophysicist, to Brian Boru, legendary first king of all Ireland; from Brian Johnson, cricket commentator of blessed memory, to … er … Brian Johnson, helium-tonsilled lead singer of AC/DC; from Brian Blessed, extravagantly-bearded falstaffian thesp, to Brian Wilson, tortured genius behind the Beach Boys…
At least you’re not albatross’d with a name like Henry. When I was growing up it was always prefaced with ‘Hooray’ and had connotations of hopelessly inbred aristocracy.
PS: That previous statement should be in a special font type denoting irony, but there isn’t one. Why not? – post-ironically, you could use Comic Sans.
PPS: This reminds me of a joke in which a social worker visits a single parent with ten sons, all of whom are called Wayne. The social worker asks her client what she does when she needs to address any of her sons individually. “Easy,” comes the response. “I just use their surnames.”
Matt Damon
Matt Dillon
Matt LeBlanc
Matt Brown
I have no complaints.
Henry?
Prince Hal (aka Henry V)
Harry Potter (was he ever a Henry though)
Son of current Prince of Wales
Henry Walpole
Henry VIII
Henry James
Thierry Henry (oops)
Henry Ford
Henry Moore
Henry Dawkins (ooops again)
what are you complaining about?
Matt the Hoople
I’ve had flatmates called Cathy, Catherine and Kate (all at the same time), Cathy (a different one), Kat, and Katie. Before I got married I met 2 other people with the exact same name as me (one of them lived in the block of flats next to mine; we did a mail exchange every week), and my sister-in-law didn’t change her name when she got married and is therefore still called Kathy Ennis. (Her sister has the same first name as my sister).
Thanks, Mum and Dad.
p.s. I also have a brother-in-law with the same name as my Dad, and an uncle with the same name as my husband. The wedding was very confusing.
To keep the meme going:-
Graham Coxon
Graham Norton
Graham Chapman
Graham Greene
Graeme Garden
(Alexander) Graham Bell
Billy Graham
George Graham
Grigio Prosciutto (‘Grey Ham’ in Italiano)
Graham K. Steel (since the K stands for this – I keeps that one quiet)
who’s next? passes on baton, puff…pant…
@Graham – you’re not serious? My middle initial is ‘E’ and I insist to my children that it stands for ‘Extraordinary’.
@Maxine. Sorry. I know you’re just trting to cheer me up. But they’re all Hooray Henries except for an unreadable novelist, an antisemitic petrolhead and a bloke who made enormous sculptures of women with holes in them. But Theirry Henry, I admit, he has va-va-voom.
@ Henry – I know it’s terribly corny but according to my parents, I was born during a leap year…. I settled for Kevin in the end.
Take heart, Graham. My middle name is sure to bring you amusement.
Only a couple of actresses come to mind, as well as actresses assuming the name. Pretty, but comes with “baggage:http://www.fife.50megs.com/scottish-heather.htm.
Richard, do you know the secret of heather ale?
Darn that forgotten quotation mark. For once I hadn’t previewed.
Wayne is a name common, though not ubiquitous, to serial killers.
Go ahead. Ask me why I know this.
I don’t see how he can knock Brian. He was, after all, almost the Messiah.
Wayne is a name common, though not ubiquitous, to serial killers. Go ahead. Ask me why I know.
OK, Jeff. Why?
Because I’m writing a serial killer novel, of course!
Well, the poll must be flawed as Lisa is the most successful of the Simpsons.
@ Heather:
Richard, do you know the secret of heather ale?
no, but it might be fun finding out. Asymptotic wisdom.
Because I’m writing a serial killer novel, of course!
Now, we’re very punctuation-conscious here at NN. So do you mean ‘serial-killer novel’, or a homicidal novel published in serial form?
Cereal killers. Mmm.
PS. A ‘homicidal novel’? One that’s really, really angry?
I was thinking of The Monster Book of Monsters – a J. K. Rowling creation.
I was thinking of The God Delusion.
Quick! Post a picture of Heidi!!
Phew, that was close.
breathes
I think Jeff meant a really excellent novel in installments.
Or don’t you Brits use “killer” and “wicked” as compliments?
Hounslow, innit?
Or don’t you Brits use “killer” and “wicked” as compliments?
Only if we’re either under 16 or live in South London.
Heather, that would be a killer serial novel.
Henry, I am a member of the Latter Day Liberal Punctuationists. You might mistakenly call us the Latter-Day Liberal Punctuationists, but that would confuse us with the real Latter-Day Liberal Punctuationists, who are a bunch of bloody splitters.
Hey, you guys think you have problems. My first name is David!
You might mistakenly call us the Latter-Day Liberal Punctuationists, but that would confuse us with the real Latter-Day Liberal Punctuationists, who are a bunch of bloody splitters.
This anecdote comes from Emo Philips, I think.
I was walking across a bridge late one night and saw a man on the parapet just about to jump into the river.
“Don’t jump”, I cried. “Think about how beautiful God’s world is. Are you religious?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Christian or Buddhist?”
“Christian”
“Catholic or Protestant?”
“Protestant.”
“That’s amazing, so am I. Episcopalian or Baptist?”
“Baptist.”
“Incredible! So am I. Original Baptist or Reform Baptist?”
“Reform.”
“Wow! So am I! Baptist Reform of 1879, or Baptist Reform of 1915?”
“Baptist Reform of 1915.”
“Die, Heretic Scum!” I shouted, and pushed him off the parapet.
Emo is a prophet.
A manager asked me today, do you think Emo Phillips could do Hamlet?
I said, I think he could, and he could bring to it unrealized possibilities.
Someone mentioned the Simpsons up there somewhere -
Matt
BrownGroenberg@Cath – well, if you get lumbered by a name like Maxine, Catherine is the sort of name you call your own daughter. I did, anyway. It is such a beautiful name:
Catherine Deneuve
Catherine Earnshaw
Catherine Linton
Catherine the Great
Saint Catherine
Catherine (aka Cate) Blanchett
Catherine (aka Cate) Bragg
Catherine Flynn (recent winner of Costa book prize)
not to mention, as you write, all the Katherines, Katharines and Catharines.
Wheel?
So Helen is officially the least lucky? I guess the name was unlucky for the Trojans and is intermittently so for the people of Washington State...
Already got her, Richard, as in “Saint Catherine”.
Helen—still beats Maxine!
Helen Hogg
Helen Mirren
Helen Dunmore
Helen Keller
Helen Bannerman (very non PC!)
Helen Shapiro
I’d never heard of Helen Hogg before, she seems pretty cool.
I must confess I’m not getting very far with famous Maxines…
I do like Catherine the Great ;)
I wish I’d known it was possible for us “Catherine with a C”s to abbreviate to Cate. I was always told I couldn’t, and it seems too late to change now!!
Wasn’t there a Madame Maxine in the Harry Potter books? IIRC she was the headmistress of the French equivalent of Hogwarts.
She was Madame Olympe Maxime, headmistress of Beauxbatons Academy. The most famous Maxine I can think of is our very own Maxine Clarke. There – NN has its own celebrity!
I stand corrected.
Playing this game has broken my compulsive “google before posting” habit.
I have come to this late but there seem to be the following on Google
Maxine Waters
Maxine Greene
Maxine Mckew
Maxine Sullivan
Maxine Kumin
Maxine McArthur
Heavy on authors and politicians.
But better sample than Brian, which is heavy on life of…
Gosh, I haven’t heard of any of those Maxines.
The only ones I know are
Maxine Singer (with whom people still occasionally confuse me)
Maxine a character from Coronation St, a TV soap opera which I have never watched but suffered “ragging” about while this person featured.
And Maxine girlfriend of the murderer Ian Huntley.
So apart from the first, not edifying.
Cath: yes, we were always being told silly rules like this (you can abbrieviate Katharine to Kate but not Catherine to Cate; or you can spell it Catherine or Katharine, but not Catharine or Katherine).
Another one was that if you were a girl you could not play cricket or soccer, and when you had grown up you could not join the British Antarctic Survey.
I once knew a Catherine, who, when a teenager, insisted that she was called Caitlin, abbreviated to Cait. The odd thing was that when she was small we all knew her as Tracey. Funny old world.
The British Antarctic Survey is definitely an all-male institution. Quiote right too. The girlies can always join the Scott Polari Research Institute.
I understand that the BAS even went as far as to get a special dispensation when they bought in the Equal Opportunities Act.
However, even the infamous Oxford and Cambridge club has now relented, so if the BAS is still as you say, Henry (I’m amazed), then it should really think again, given what women on these subzero missions have done in recent years (given birth and treated themselves for cancer being but two).