What's in a name?

I love names. They are a constant source of amusement for me and always have been. When I was younger I would sometimes go to work with my Dad when he went on 'mergencies' and while he was sorting out the fault in the telephone exchange I would sit with the operators and read the directories. I particularly love a funny name, the Drew Peacocks, Dick Heads, Teresa Greens and Oliver Klozoffs of this world make life worth living.  I believe that my dad worked with a Mr Kibbles, Donald who would answer the phone with a flourish, "Donkey Balls Southend Irish Sea."  I've never worked out what Southend Irish Sea was, though.

Yesterday, Twitter and Facebook exploded with the news that Katie Hopkins, self-confessed snob and ex-Apprentice candidate had made Holly Willybooby (I wish Keith Lemmon hadsn't made that joke because I can't remember her real name any more) lose her rag on air.  The cause of Heavenly Holly shouting, "Stop, just stop now," was Katie's insistance that she wouldn't let her children play with someone called Tyler, Princess or Charmaine.  Obviously, it didn't help that she then said that calling a potentially ugly child Bella was stupid.  (Holly's daughter is called Belle).  If you missed it or are reading this blog in 2093 (long after I'm gone) then you can watch it all here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edZjdgU0asM.  If this blog is still here, YouTube is still here and the internet hasn't crashed the whole world.

The woman is outragous, of course she is, but as she sat there smugly stating that she wasn't the only parent to do it I knew she was right.  No, of course I don't mean she was right to judge children by their names but she was right that lots of people do.  There was some research published in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology in 1950 (Vol 45(1) Jan1950) that showed people have terrible name bias.  They showed 150 men 30 photos of girls, chosen for their ambiguous ethnic looks and asked to them to rate them on whether they liked them, thought they were beautiful, intelligent, ambitious and entertaining.  Then they repeated the test 2 months later, giving the faces names that were classically Negro (their word), Italian, Jewish or Irish.  They found that the results were significantly less favourable, particularly for the Negro and Jewish names, although the women labelled with Jewish names were thought to be more intelligent and ambitious. There were less changes with the Italian and Irish names.  But just because people do it doesn't make it right.

It is natural to be put off a name if you encounter a particularly obnoxious person with that moniker.  I know teachers who have struggled to name their own children (particularly boys) because of previous 'bad boys' in their class. My friend named her son Thomas because she had never taught a bad Tom.  Unfortunately, as soon as she did every Thomas she taught was a little so and so.

It's also natural to put an image to a name. If we didn't, every novel would be like reading Wolf Hall, where every character is called Thomas and you get completely confused.  When you read a name like Elsie, Olive or Gladys you think little old lady, grey hair, quite sweet and hailing from the East End having moved to the country to escape the 'immigrants' (or is that just me?).  My daughter's boyfriend had a comment on his F1 article from a Dorothy (which makes me think of Ruby Slippers and following the Yellow Brick Road) and he was surprised that a Dorothy could be an F1 fan.

The problem is that it's only one tiny step from, "That kid Travis in my child's class has just been expelled, I'm not surprised with a name like Travis," to "All Travis' are bad and should be expelled/ locked up/shot/kept in concentration camps." Bigotry comes in many forms; racism, sexism, ageism, name-ism and they're all bad.

Katie Hopkins sounds like a lovely name.  I imagine a wholesome, sweetshop owner who wears floral skirts and jeweled sandles and is slightly unlucky in love but for whom the right man is waiting just around the corner.  That just goes to show how wrong you can be about a name. This Katie Hopkins is a snob (who doesn't seem to have sent her children to private school so that they can only mix with Cosmos, Maximillians and Karenzas).  She tweets outragous things like, "Ginger babies.  Just like a baby  Just so much harder to love."  She is famous for having stolen both her husbands from their wives by seducing them at work and having sex with them in fields.   Some of this may be explained by the fact that her twitter name is KTHopkins as KT is a very different person to to Katie. KT is more ruthless, doesn't have time for being nice she wears power heels and teeny tiny pencil skirts with blouses that show her lacy bra.  She flicks her long blond hair and bats her eyelashes to prove that a woman can do anything.

It's her children I feel sorry for.  They are doomed.  They can't choose their own friends now and how sad is that? What she doesn't realise is that once they go to senior school, they make new friends and those friends don't wait to be vetted by Mummy.  They hang out at lunch, enjoy a spot of planking in the rubbish French teacher's lesson and pass notes about boys/girls they fancy when the strict Maths teacher's back is turned.  They make alliances with people who are like them.  They find other children with obnoxious mothers so they can compare how awful their home life is.

Looking at the picture of her gorgeous children I can see they are already starting a rebellion.  She recently tweeted that her son had expressed an interest in being an hairdresser and that her husband was currently beating it out of him (I'm paraphrasing, as I can't find the original tweet) but I am so glad that he is already rebelling against his long locks and his sisters' uncombed hair.  Next thing you know he will bring home his new boyfriend, Tyler and announce that they are going to adopt twins, Chardonnay and Budweiser.