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Rod McPhee: What’s in a name?
RODNEY, YOU PLONKER: Only Fools and Horses.
Bravo to Paul Weller who this week named one of his newborn twins Bowie – I think it’s great that you can give your kids whatever name takes your fancy.
Unless, of course, you select a somewhat aristocratic Scottish name in full knowledge that one day your kid will attend the local comprehensive in a small English mining town.
Roderick – yes, that is my actual name – wasn’t the sort of title they’d heard much in working class Derbyshire. At least not until I was four years old and, joy of joys, the Monty Python boys came up with Life of Brian and thought it would be a hoot to mock a Roman governor who couldn’t pronounce the letter R. And so, “Welease Wodewick” was something I heard on a regular basis.
But that was nothing compared to the hilarity which ensued two years later when Only Fools and Horses came along and the classic comedy character, Rodney Trotter, was born. Thus, for the next, ooh, 30 years or so people – generally bonehead types – called me a plonker.
(At this point I should make clear that I did, in fact, have it relatively easy. Spare a thought for the lad up the street called Dorian who everyone thought was named after the Jewish nymphomaniac in TV sitcom Birds of a Feather, or one of our family friends who, no word of a lie, was called Elfingstone McCandlish.)
Anyway, like I said, I don’t think anyone should be prevented from calling their offspring whichever title they choose. The reality of what you call your kids, on the other hand, is something to seriously ponder. Because it’s all well and good naming your child Bowie but, as I mentioned before, Paul Weller’s child probably won’t be going to the local secondary school in a post-industrial heartland. In fact, I’m guessing Paul Weller’s child will probably end up in some grand institution where you’d be laughed out of the classroom if you had the temerity to turn up with anything close to a pedestrian name. If you’re called Sinus or Flatulence or Mumbai or something, that’s par for the course, but James or Rachel? Well, that’s just weird.
But it’s inevitable that this trend for giving your kids curious names – one which everyone from the Beckhams to Gwyneth Paltrow has set in motion – will trickle even further down the social pyramid.
In fact, one day you can pretty much bet that hardly anyone will be known as Richard or Katie, at some point in the future everyone will be named after some kind of random object or exotic city or gastro-intestinal disorder.
In the meantime though, spare a thought for the ordinary boys and girls who have to endure the transitional period, all the Rodericks who are packed off every morning to face the playground primates.
Sure, think up whatever crazy title you like for your children, but, please, think even harder about what school you’ll be sending them to.
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