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It’s common knowledge that Kevin is Britain’s
least glamorous name. And though I don’t resent my parents
for giving me the ultimate Chav signifier – how were they
to know, back in dim 1972? – a life of fake Burberry and
Argos gold seemed predestined (and the reality isn’t far
off).
But what does life hold in store for the Class of 2004’s
babies, whose names are a genre so flamboyant, erudite and expressive
it puts to shame anything the average A-lister - think of Apple
Martin-Paltrow, Misty Kid Spiteri-Heath and Pepper Coxon - can
dream up? Aah, isn’t little Ulysses sweet? Do Amberlori and
Sonny sleep well? How has Ridley taken to his new brother, Mack?
Guess what - Jaspin took his first steps the other day at creche
with (I’m not making any of this up) Gracie, Florian, Myrah,
Maximus, Arlow, Blythe, Buster, Gawaine and Ski?
Ski.
Previously in the UK baby-naming was a sober and highly considered
practice over which new parents would agonise for months. The options
were by and large simple: you named your child after a favourite
relative, pop- or film star, or after the leading figure of whichever
religion you subscribed to.
Since then babynaming has gone ga-ga. The most popular names of
2004 – the somewhat pedestrian Jack and Emily - mask a highly
eccentric approach to naming. A cursory glance at the National
Register of Births reveals a nation tossing off its reserve and
embracing the new creativity with a characteristically British
emphasis on overdoing it.
Some general trends emerge. Naming you child after a plant, colour
or other aspect of nature is big news, including Lily, Fleur, Rose,
Indigo, Berry, Poppy, Daisy, Sky, Tiger and Blossom; a distinct
nautical bias also emerges with Dolphin, Pearl and Ocean. Or naming
your child as if the Blitzkrieg is still raging over London’s
skies: Sid, Stan, Ernie, Leon, Evie, Vic and Archie have all been
noted in a cyclical echo of pre-war tastes.
Furthermore, many new parents have clearly been studying hard
at the classics and developed a profound interest in Arthurian,
Greek or Roman legends, accounting for the presence of Blythe,
Guinevere, Gawaine, Mungo, Maximus, Isis, Titus, Ulysses, Ulrich,
Solomon and Elwood above the pegs in the primary school cloakroom.
Gone are the days when only celebrities with a surfeit of time
and lack of in-touchness with reality dreamt up zany names for
their new arrival. ‘This starts as a celebrity thing,’ theorises
Elena Dalrymple, editor of Mother & Baby magazine. The top
ten UK names are all very traditional, and it takes a very long
time to for a name to drop in or out. But there has been a proliferation
of books showing a huge number of names. People are more aware
of the huge number of names now. They want their child to stand
out and know that there won’t be five other similarly-named
kids in class .’
While it’s hardly news that the British have become a notion
of shoppers to the tune of a £1 trillion debt, who would
have suspected we’d be naming future generations in honour
of brands or consumer goods? Evian, Nike, Armani, Lexus, Versace,
Chanel and at least 50 Chardonnays are all, at this very moment,
bruising their knees in the playgrounds of the UK. And while we’re
at it, there’s further trend for naming your child as if
they were a piece of Ikea Furniture: Arjun, Aari, Han, Daan, Malaika
or Emil, for instance.
Meanwhile, the celebrity trickle-down and flatpacking of contemporary
motherhood only goes so far, and it’s a safe bet stylist
Katy England’s son will probably be the only Wolf in his
class register. ‘One thing we notice a lot of,’ says
a local registrar from a town near Wales, ‘is deliberate
mis-spelling of names. Alicia, for example, becomes Alisha.’ Though
it’s anyone’s guess as to what Kaella, Chervanna, Kymia
and Jaspin and are all misspellings of.
Fun though it may be the baby-naming process can be fraught with
anguish. Design director Catherine, 32, thought long and hard before
naming her son Oberon, 4, and Otillie, 21 months. ‘The responsibility
or naming a child is hard,’ she says. ‘We wanted something
that wasn’t run-of-the-mill - like my own name. Oberon means ‘Great
Bear’, and Ottilie was a name I loved as a child which came
back to me when I was pregnant - I used to love Lady Ottilline
Morrell of the Bloomsbury Group.
‘Everyone is really positive though,’ Catherine explains, ‘although
my father was heard storming round the house shouting, “no
grandson of mine is going to named after a fairy!” Plus,
some people think I named him after the Star Wars character, which
is the downside.’
It’s clear that the urge to pre-programme future glamour
and individualism into a child is a risky business for plebs and
celebs alike. Jesse Wallace’s Talulah Lilac may well be the
apex of cutsiness on the yummy-mummy circuit today, but what’s
to say the it won’t be the Sharon or Tracey of 2020, when
the sprog comes of age? Let’s face it, Ulysses, or Ulrich
have every chance of becoming the Darren and Kevin of the future.
The fact is it makes sense to be as creative as possible now because
no baby name is future-proof. By the time any of today’s
nippers grow into the perpetual embarrassment of adolesence, the
hot name of the era may well be Kierkegaard, Aluminium, Banana,
AEIOU, Nokia or N’gwgwgaba? Or even, for that, matter, some
remixed version of Kevin. (But somehow I doubt it).
© 2005 K*v*n Braddock
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