Can anyone do an end of the week quiz? I can't see one for this week, so if I'm treading on anyone's toes, I apologise, and will call this something else. In his poem "Old Man", Edward Thomas said:
"Old Man, or Lad's-Love, - in the name there's nothing
To one that knows not Lad's-Love or Old Man,
The hoar-green feathery herb, almost a tree,
Growing with rosemary and lavender.
Even to one that knows it well, the names
Half decorate, half perplex, the thing it is:
At least, what that is clings not to the names
In spite of time. And yet I like the names ..."
Which leads, rather circuitously, to the questions:
1. Have you ever named a ship, a flower, a new species? If so, what was it?
2. If not, what would you like to name, what would you call it, and why?
3. Do you recognise the ship in the picture? Clue: it is named after a country and it was designed by a famous British engineer.
4. My brother used to think he was named after that engineer because they shared the first two initials. In fact, he was named after an uncle. Were you named after anyone, and if so, who? (You don't have to give away your real name if you're shy). Who would you like to be named after?
5. The boy in the picture is trying really hard to turn that wheel. Have you ever attempted something that seemed impossible? Did you succeed?
6. "In idle August, while the sea soft,
and leaves of brown islands stick to the rim
of this Caribbean ..."
What well-known schooner does this long poem mention?
7. If you could just sail away, where would you go, and why?
Sorry about the poetry, it makes a change from song lyrics.
49 comments:
Sorry for totally derailing this thread, but I'm very upset and angry, and really need to blow off steam.
I've just been on the receiving end of yet another of Richardrj's offensively patronising put-downs on the Mothership (not RR, another post).
I know I've been told before by DarceysDad and others not not to let this obnoxious playground bully get me down, but on a hot night at the end of a long tiring day, I've rather taken it personally, and it's left me rather stressed-out.
OK then...
1. No, but if I do ever buy a ship, I'm going to call her Dignity.
2. I'd like to name an undiscovered island, and I'd call it simply Innis - which means island in Cornish, but is also the name of my first daughter.
3. No, but I think I can guess from your clues. Is it in Bristol?
4. It would be great if your brother was called Isambard... I wasn't named after anyone, but do share my name with a surprising number of cartoon characters.
5. Ask me again when I've finished my novel...
6. I didn't know the poem - I Googled it, which is clearly cheating.
7. Wouldn't that be great? It would have to be Greece for me... so many islands to explore. I spent some time living there, and it gets into your soul.
I suppose I'd better try and answer the questions.
(1) and (2) combined. Are we allowed fictitious ones? There was a starship called "Scunthorpe" in piece of collaborative fiction I was involved with a few years back. There were others named after Welsh towns carefully selected to be unpronounceable my American co-writers - "Cwmgwrach" was one I remember.
(3) No
(4) Not really, although I do share a second name (John) with my dad.
(5) Can't think of one at the moment, but I'm sure there are some seemingly impossible software problems I've eventually solved. Bang your head against the wall for long enough, and the wall will collapse.
(6) No idea
(7) At the moment, somewhere not as hot, so I think I'd set sail for the fjords of Norway.
Which thread Kalyr. We'll go and diss him.
I'm on my way to bed and seeing no comments I feel I should get in first but I can't really think of proper answers to all the questions. Might give it a bit more think time in the morning but for now:-
1. Er, no, sorry.
2. That one needs think time. I'll come back to you on that one tomorrow.
3. From the clues I'll hazard a guess that it's SS Britannia (or is it Great Britain?) as designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
4. Kinda sorta and it is kinda sorta after my uncle. My middle name is Stewart (note the spelling) which was my maternal grandmother's maiden name. In the Scottish tradition middle names are often surnames but my middlename obviously doubles as a forename aswell. It is also the forename of my uncle (i.e. my mother's brother) who got the name from his mother's surname etc. etc. This is the uncle who moved to Australia in 1960 and who I was ever so disappointed to meet when I went out there in 1992. I think Darceysdad and DaddyPig heard the story in the pub back in January. I'll leave it there.
5. More think time required
6. Er, Sloop John B? I haven't a clue. I really shouldn't have started to answer these questions at this time of night.
7. 'Sail Away'. Did someone just mention that great Deep Purple track from their classic 1974 album 'Burn'? No? Oh well in that case my great sailing experience would be across the Pacific on a catamaranc with some old time Polynesian sailors who can tell where they are just by the swell of the ocean or the tides or the winds. I mean how do they do that? It's amazing!
I should type faster then I will be the first....
Bah! 5th Again!
Off to sleep on questions 2 and 5.
I'VE BEEN ON THAT SHIP! Twas lovely. Don't worry Kalyr, I find that person very aggressive and patronising too, I don't respond to posts that really annoy me (unless it's to defend the helpless, like Dsd!), after getting some wise words from Nilpf over my own Culture blog bete noire. Take a deep breath and try to not bit the keyboard.
@Mnemonic:
The School of Rock thread. My riposte will probably have been removed by the moderators by now, because I rather lost my temper with him.
I don't mind him disagreeing with me, because everyone has their own opinions, but it's his smugly patronising tone that gets to me. I've always hated bullies.
Yes, he a patronising git. I share a lot of his musical tatses but can't bear to agree with hin because he's so obnoxious. Still miss JAP, who often took him on in battle. Come back, JAP, all is forgiven!
And after the third glass of Pinot Noir, mu=y typing really goes to Hell!
Bloody hell, even Sheffieldshehl seems to be agreeing with me...
Only takes one bottle of beer before my tpyign goes teh adkmsdksbvjbs
As for your questions, I'm afraid I've never named anything, other than pets. My last cat was calle dPersephone, Dani is so called so that Jon can go and shout "DAN!" a la Alan Partridge when it's time for her brekkie. He's easily amused. I'd like to name a book, one day, though I have no idea as to what it will be called. Probably something nicked from a song!
I was named after a character in a radio soap my mum listened to when she was pregnant, though she can't remember which one. Ive always hated my name, so 70s and common. I'd rather be a flower or a goddess. Cheers mum!
I don't really do the impossible."Women: know your limits!" as the Harry Enfield sketch goes...
Not sure on the poem, it's not The Wreck of the Deutschland though, a poem that haunted my A levels leading to an utter hatred of GM Hopkins. even now I struggle to show enthusiasm for his work.
"I must go back to the seas again, to the lonely seas and the sky
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by"...Masefield. Having watch Francesco de Mosca do the Med, I'd like to follow in his charming, louche footsteps.
@ Mnemonic and Kalyr - responses are creeping in over on "Quixotic".
Re the EOTWQs:
1. No. Resisted the urge to pay to name a star on the birth of first daughter. Named a few of my cars, and one house but that's about it.
2. In the unlikely event of my attaining billionaire status anytime soon, it would be the new combined LFC/EFC football stadium that I'd have built once I'd ousted the Gillett & Hicks.
So in real life, you can tell the thought has never really occurred to me.
3. No.
4. My middle name is also the maternal family heirloom - Uncle, cousin, granddad similarly blessed.
It's a damn sight better than the alternative. I was born on Churchill's 90th birthday, which is also the Scottish Saint's Day, and was very nearly called Andrew Winston.
5. Um, this is going to sound spectacularly pathetic, but since you asked ... I absolutely will NOT go near anything to do with the leccy, gas or plumbing, partly as a result of being blown clean across a bedroom changing a light bulb in a crappy rented house back in the 80s. If white or brown goods break, they go to the tip and we buy new . . . or used to until the world forgot my business number back at Easter time. The vacuum cleaner broke a fortnight ago. For the first time ever, I dismantled something that needs a current bigger than offered by 4 AA batteries, investigated the problem, found what I hoped was the cause, re-assembled it, plugged it in, gritted my teeth and pressed the on switch. IT BLOODY WELL WORKED! And to add an extra slice of glory pie, I'd even managed to fix the faulty catch on the tilting head mechanism too.
Now that may not be anything to you lot, but I'll be living off the look on my wife's face for some time to come, I tell you.
6. Haven't got a scooby.
7. Can't imagine anything I'd like to do less, I'm afraid.
1. My Saxophone, I think it was called Melissa in honour of Melissa Bacon. I nicked the idea from the Commitments.
2. I'm usually very bad at naming things, so I'll nick Dsd's idea and rename Ashburton Grove to something more elegant than the Emirates.
3. No
4. I share my first name with a second cousin, which is annoying, apparently my parents hadn't really kept up on the family births while they were halfway around the world, I know that if I'd been a girl I would have been called Hellénie. My second name is the same as my maternal grandfather's, and my third is my father's, like all my brothers and sisters. It's a strange thing, he and his brothers all have the same second name, my grandfather's.
5. No, I'm too afraid of failure for that.
6.Dunno
7. Greece for me too, I like the idea of sailing, but really, I'm an Earth man.
1. My clapped out 26 year old Polo is called Gertrude. Parts of Devon and Donegal have names that friends would recognise - [Cauli]'s Steps, Firewood Cove etc, but no-one else will ever know.
2. I would like to name a perpetual motion machine (that would enable all to have power, food and happy lives) after my dad - he spent years believing that it might actually be possible,
3. I don't recognise the ship in the picture, but I suppose I could've Googled it. But I love Victorian era engineering - the aqueduct that won heritage status last week looks gorgeous, we're planning a trip.
4. I was apparently given a boy's name for my first 6 weeks, because my folks expected/wanted one. The name I was eventually given came from nowhere, never sat quite right with me. No idea what other name would work better. But I'm getting a bit fed up with Cauliflower in these parts so may reinvent myself using one of my many other online handles. Perhaps I could run it as a quiz, see how long it takes for you all to identify me under a new name.
5. I feel that I attempt the impossible every day at work, helping people change their minds - seems to work some of the time. More practically, my only skiing experience, day 2, I stopped 2 feet from a precipice having slowed down desperately from a schuss at high speed. So yes, it could be called a success. Day 3 I broke my hand. Never went again.
6. Don't know the poem, but it made me long for the moment, 3 weeks away, when I get to Sweden. My second week will be (I hope) under sail in a little wooden boat. If any poems come out of it I'll let you know.
7. We always had a family plan to sail to South America. but it didn't happen. Now it would have to be somewhere much cooler - Scandinavia, Faeroes, coastlines and fjords. Birdwatching.
I'll come back to the other questions later, but I'm having HMS Fable as the name of my ship before ToffeeBoy or DsD do. It'll be the first time I've got a Shack nom in before either of them!
DsD: I've done that my entire life, if something quits or breaks I reach for the screwdriver, it usually gets fixed. My wife's now doing the same, I'm so proud that she's able to fix things. My dad used to have a saying re. cars; They're made so you don't have to have a PhD to fix 'em, the blokes who fix cars are as thick as thee and me!
Cauli: Contrary to scientific thought I've long thought that the earth with it's iron core and spinning in an electromagnetic field is actually a giant electrical generator, since lightning goes from earth to clouds it almost makes sense. If so it might be considered a 'perpetual motion machine', which I know is impossible but how long is perpetual? It's been doing it for umpteen thousand/million years.
Ali: I like Derek Walcott but I don't know his poetry, I like his fiction and I'd love to spend the rest of my days sailing the Caribbean.
1. Have you ever named a ship, a flower, a new species....
No, but I've deflowered a new species.
2. ... would you like to name?
Some kind of ethical lesson thing, you know where people are trying to make a choice and say 'I know, let's run it through the Tin Test')
4. Were you named after anyone?
I've told this before. My parents picked all ours kids relative to our conception. My real name is Don (morning sex). Now my brother Otto...
5. ... something that seemed impossible? Did you succeed?
a) Get a song on the A list. b) Once.
6. well-known schooner?
The Mississippi Queen
7. If you could just sail away, where would you go, and why?
Our opposite lattitude and longitude in the southern hemisphere. Shouldn't it be exactly like here?
@ Tim (Kalyr)
He's not a nice person.
DsD talking about naming cars reminds me that my wife always did that. Our previous junker was named Gordon, after the chef, and ironically burnt oil.
We have a 12'' garden gnome on top of our fridge that I brought over from Canada that's named after the accountant from the campground I worked at.
- as a quick initial aside to BaBe- funny you should mention Shack, at this very moment I am listening to Michael Head and the Strands (their "The Magical World Of.." album) that I had completely forgotten I had, but which I found when attempting to re-organise the collection the other day...better than I remembered!
...anyway, the questions:
1. Nothing i'm afraid, but I'm a big believer that a persons/object/project/band etc name has a big impact on their life or it's success or whatever. I'm dreading having to name my own child (if and when it comes) as i'm so indecisive and I know it will affect them forever!
2. I'd like to name a short-lived dance craze that everybody in the world gets obsessed about for a few weeks and is then forgotten forever (whatever happened to those??my youth club discos were full of 'em). I'd call it the Wazoo! Do the Wazoo!!
3. I think i've been beaten to this (not that I knew the answer anyway).
4. Myself and both of my brothers all have biblical names, and my middle name is from the Bible too. Not sure why 'cos neither of my parents are in any way religious at all, I think they just thought they sounded nice. But now it has become a tradition with my sister calling her son Zeke (after Ezekial), and I like a nice family tradition for names so no complaints.
5. We say "third time lucky", but in Japanese there's a saying that translates something like "If it didn't work the first 2 times then only an idiot would think it's going to work at the third attempt"! (I may have embellished that translation somewhat!). All of which was a clever ploy to avoid answering the question...
6. "brown islands stick to the rim", it's taking a lot of self-discipline not to make the obvious toilet jokes...ah...
7. I have to say that I do like the idea. I always think that seas are like roads that instead of taking you to boring places like the supermarket, take you to different countries and new worlds, which is the ultimate freedom. Not sure where I'd like to go though, lots of tiny Pacific islands maybe
Ah! Some great answers already. Barbryn, "Innis" is a beautiful name. Tim, I hope you've recovered from your bad blogger encounter and are sailing into the blue on the Starship Scunthorpe. Gordonimmel gets a point for the SS Great Britain & Isambard Kingdom Brunel (now that is a name to conjour with!)
TraceyK, that John Masefield poem has been in my head ever since I posted this. DsD, I think mending a vacuum cleaner is marvellous, and Ejaydee, there has to be story behind naming a saxophone 'Melissa'?
Cauliflower's perpetual motion machine sounds like an attempt at the impossible but it would be great if it succeeded - perhaps DsD could have a go? Goneforeign gets a point for Derek Walcott, but can anyone name the schooner?
Balearic Beat, HMS Fable sounds good and I look forward to more answers. As for Tincanman, and the 12 inch garden gnome - we have an elephant-shaped watering can called Ewan. So there.
Keep 'em coming!
Finding it quite hard to concentrate on the questions as I'm too busy feeling disturbed by the casual way in which Cauliflower proposes to become someone else. It's as bad as the time we discovered that nilpferd are plural rather than singular.
1. Pets, cars, guitar (Buffy), bee colonies.
2. No particular urge to name anything else.
3. Must be the SS Great Britain.
4. First name is shared by my father and grandfather. One of my middle names is from my saint's day.
5. Was firmly convinced that one of my books would never be finished; it was about five years overdue in the end, but completed.
6. Haven't a clue.
7. Byzantium.
I like the take on it this week, Ali. And of course poetry is fine, song lyrics would have been a big no no...
1. Sadly not, but I do own a piece of the moon and possibly have naming rights on that. Any ideas? Basingstoke has a nice ring to it...
2. It's enough that we're currently debating names for the as-yet-far-off nanoFrod, but thus far Isambard has to be a real contender.
3. Beaten to that one. I have a bit of an Isambard obsession, as it goes.
4. My family is all rather uninspired in the name department (middle names of first sons beginning with M being the only thing that seems to go on), so nothing for me. I love my name, but have always felt it has too many similar sounds running together in it for comfort. Lots of sibilance and rhotic, um, ness. I would, of course, want to be named after IKB.
5. I refer you to the esteemed EJD's perfect answer. Unless you count the play I directed a couple of years ago. But that's another story.
6. Nope. Sorry. No idea. I did a lot of post-colonial work for my Masters, but Walcott is one that always passed me by.
7. I agree with DsD that the idea of sailing often gives me the jitters, but I'd be happy to nip over to the Scillys and enjoy the weather over there.
1. No. My ex-wife determined our son's name, which I do like but which no-one ever spells correctly (Aidan, correct; Aiden or even Aden, more common).
2. I quite like the description-names used by traditional societies. 'Shit-on-two-loos' instead of John Prescott, perhaps.....
3. I don't recognize it but I'll go with the SS GB if there's a prize.
4. Not named after anyone in particular (although I do share a surname with other members of my family). Having a name like 'Captain Trips' might be cool but I'm not sure I ever had the constitution to earn it. I'd be dead by now, too.
5. I managed to squeeze a few IT projects into life at the correct moment, often a little to my own surprise. The most nerve-wracking was the opening of a Costco-type operation where we were putting in a membership card production process for customers (they had to join before they could shop). The cocky little whizz-kid we had to use for the photo/register/card software insisted on trolling around on roller blades to address problems, of which there were several. Probably only the prescence of company directors and trade press stopped me from doing him serious harm.
6. No, sorry. Not a clue.
7. Not sure I'd want to sail anywhere, really, as I'm only a fair-weather sailor.
"we discovered that nilpferd are plural rather than singular." WTF? When was that memo issued?!
Abahachi - not casual... considered for some time. I'd like something more in -keeping with who I feel I am - no longer a melancholy flower. But if the thought is too disturbing, I can wait ;-)
Are cauliflowers melancholy? I always think of them as rather jolly vegetables. Don't mind me...
1. I nearly named a record label.. and I thought of Spillharmonic in the shower before Snadfrod posted it, honest I did..
2. I have a name ready for my son, should there ever be one, but I'm not telling anyone besides the other half of the nilpferd...
3. I guessed the name of the ship, my dad is a big Brunel fan, I think we had a teatowel of it at home and there was certainly a portrait of the ship in the living room.
4. I was named for a big band arranger and a small town in Scotland, in that order. I'd like to point out that my forename has nothing to do with the moon landings.
5. I guess it seemed impossible to emigrate to Germany, learn the language, work and live, and even enjoy the experience, but here I am.
6. (haven't peeked or googled)- I'd say it's Derek Walcott's reworking of the Odyssey, so Odysseus' boat. A beautiful poem.
7. I'd recreate my parent's journey from Southampton to Dunedin and pay them a visit.. then I'd fly back home.. It might also be interesting to trace some of the routes used by the great Polynesian seafarers, recently in NZ I was fascinated to learn more about their exploration of the Pacific, there's still relatively little known about how they were able to navigate such long distances.
Nice questions, makes me yearn for the ocean..
Oh and Tracky, humbled to see your still following the nilpferd credo.. I need it myself at the moment, with a client who is a bit slack at paying half-year-old invoices...
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1. Have you ever named a ship, a flower, a new species? If so, what was it?
No
2. If not, what would you like to name, what would you call it, and why?
I'd quite like to name an asteroid after my late Mum
3. Do you recognise the ship in the picture? Clue: it is named after a country and it was designed by a famous British engineer.
It looks like Brunel's Great Britain
4. My brother used to think he was named after that engineer because they shared the first two initials. In fact, he was named after an uncle. Were you named after anyone, and if so, who? (You don't have to give away your real name if you're shy). Who would you like to be named after?
Weirdly, when my Mum was pregnant, my Dad thought I'd be a boy, but he was wrong. My middle name, Erica, is the female version of what I'd have been called if I had been a boy
5. The boy in the picture is trying really hard to turn that wheel. Have you ever attempted something that seemed impossible? Did you succeed?
I have tried many times to ride a bicycle, but I've never managed it
6. "In idle August, while the sea soft,
and leaves of brown islands stick to the rim
of this Caribbean ..."
What well-known schooner does this long poem mention?
Pass
7. If you could just sail away, where would you go, and why?
I'd love to island hop around the Mediterranean, stopping in at places on the coasts of Greece, Turkey, Italy, France, Spain etc too
@ nilpferd, Snap! re the Polynesian sailing although you probably know a bit more about it than I do and probably have a better chance of doing it. Oh and snap re the recalcitrent clients and their overdue invoices.
I'm going to come back on questions 2 and 5 which I ducked last night.
2. I'd like to have a computer game named after me......let me go back a few steps.
I love playing strategy computer games and my favourite over the years has been 'Civilization' or, to give it it's full name 'Sid Meier's Civilization'. This is because Sid Meier is such a successful game developer that his name is added to game titles to improve sales. So, when my game about the various settlements and invasions of Britain finally gets off the ground I think I'll call it 'gordonimmel's Conquest of Britain'
5. Work related and I'll try not to be too technical.
I'm a structural engineer by profession and in the mid '90's I was working on a retail development for a developer to then sell on to a famous retailer (let's just say that you would be slow to make a saving there and that they were heading kwikly into receivership). The stores agent came up with a list of improbable complaints which would be answered if we only added 150mm of concrete on top of the floor slab. Their agent smirked, my boss, our client and the developer's shoulders all slumped cos it was impossible. I spent two days hunched over my calculations thinking of every design ruse and wheeze I could think of and I made the slab work. Wiped the smirk off that buggers face (oh and I never did shop at any of those stores again).
Back again later to (try to) open a discussion about naming....
1) my gaurdian angel came to visit me through my nans back window at 3 o'clock in the morning.. I named her 'Sajja'.. I was 6 (I was quite ill and fevered) I remember not telling anyone, just in case they made me go to church!
2) I would like to finish all the things that I've started (they all have names.. books.. companies.. pictures..etc)
3) I'm too late.
4) I was named after the first King of Ireland, (this is in my mums company and when her family was alive) me and my Dad know it was after the Jack Schaefer novel.
Carrying on the tradition, my son was named after a cowboy novelist who was also a lion tamer, plus he is Z-boy after the first skateboarders.
My Grandad was Ted.. so my middle name is familiar to a couple of you round these parts.
5)20 spelling question when I was 11.
#20 antidisestablishmentarianism
impossibly I got right, the 19 others wrong.. I then found out that I SEE letters in a mirrored form.. it's a pain.
6) wouldn't know.
7) Atlantis.. I'd set up business in wet suits.
in reality . we could get to the sea from here and just go... it may well happen one day.
Right, daughter off to bed, garden watered, I'll carry on where I left off....
I wanted to expand on the subject of who people are named after.
A couple of weeks ago Toffeeboy and Abahachi (I think) mentioned being into Family History. I didn't get round to saying that I am aswell - well my parents are anyway and I get to know what they've found over the last 30 years.
In the early days when we were just finding out the names of all the various members of the various previous generations I noticed that there was alot of repetition of names especially amongst the boys - William, James, John, Thomas. Infact there were so many Johns and Thomas' that you would think that John Thomas was all that my forefathers had on their minds. As if!. But then in MY generation (i.e. my cousins and brothers) something very clearly changed.
The birth dates of my cousins range from 1948 to 1975 and I think they examplify a significant change in naming habits. The oldest cousins, born in the '40's, have very conventional names - James and William. Those born in the fifties were slightly more modern - Colin, Anne & Iain. But then in the sixties and seventies it all went ever-so-trendy. Shona, Craig, Gordon(yes that's me), Morag, Malcolm, Douglas and Graham.
(Can you tell that we're a Scottish family by the way).
Has anybody else noticed this change of naming habits in their own family?
But, coming full circle I ended up going traditional for the name of our daughter, known as tessimmel on these blogs. The main reason was that, being an Austro-Scottish family we needed a name that was recognizable and easily readable in both countries. As it happens we realised that,not only did both of our mothers have international names but that neither of them had yet had a grandchild named after them. Since it was highly likely at the time that tessimmel would be their last grandchild (my brother has recently proved us wrong with a daughter born two months ago) we opted for using their names - with subtle spelling changes- for our daughter.
So, we covered all bases with traditional, international names which also aren't too old fashioned and which pleased her grandmothers by calling her Teresa Isabella
1. No ships, plants or anything that exotic - just the two daughters (a joint effort (in more ways than one) with ToffeeGirl). I also came up with a nickname for a former work colleague which stuck so much so that she still uses it and is known by that name by most of her friends over twenty years later - in fact, it even forms the first part of her email address!
2. I have a few good band names up my sleeve ... but I'm not going to reveal them since I will clearly use one of them when I make my break into the big time - and I don't want any of you thieving gits stealing my thunder ...
3. Is it an Isambard Kingdom Brunel thingy?
4. I was named after Napoleon - he was named in 1769 - I wasn't named until nearly 200 years later! Boom boom!
5. A happy marriage, raising two beautiful, intelligent, contented children - before it all happened, the very idea scared the willies out of me ...
6. Pass
7. I'd sail away for just one day ... to The Land of Grey and Pink. Obviously ...
did you see the girl born on cup final day.. really was named:
Eva Toni Anne....
Wow! lots of food for thought. As it's nearly Friday I'll tell you the answer to No. 6, it's the schooner 'Flight', and Nilpferd(s) gets a point as well for saying it's like the Odyssey - it's a sort of West Indian odyssey. The hero (or anti-hero) is Shabine, who I presume is loosely based on Walcott himself. It's a very long poem and tells of Shabine's spiritual / personal voyage taking in love, pirates, ghost ships and history itself. The imagery is fantastic, so do google it if you've got half an hour to spare. It makes me want to sail off to the Caribbean - even though I have no connections there at all.
So we have Isambard, Shabine ... my brothers and I all had Scottish names because my dad's father was Scottish (although dad was born in Wales and my mum was born in England) - so names can be misleading! I always do 3 impossible things before breakfast (and then I wake up).
Toffeeboy, I should have anticipated your final answer. And Cauliflower, have you thought of becoming a sprout? that has a young and vibrant ring to it, somehow. Not melancholy at all.
I've been thinking about this A LOT!! Wonderful questions. Back with actual answers later. BUt I wanted to say to Gordonimmel, 1. that I love love love the name Tess (if I had a girl...) and Isabella is beautiful as well. And that my husband, David, has a very very common last name. Surname? He was named after his grandfather, who died before he was born. BUT the reason this is relevant, is that his first and last names are sooooo common, that... well, they're very common. So it was he that named our boys, and he picked slightly unusual but hopefully-not-freakish names (Malcom & Isaac), because he wanted to avoid that million-other-people-have-your-name thing. So--not sure how that fits into your histerical studies.
And where the heck is RR? Up yet?
@gordonimmel: as mentioned above, I have the same first name as my father (but was then called by my second name for ten years, until my parents forgot to note on the school form that I was known by it; as it was the sort of school where they call you by your surname, it took some time before anyone realised this, by which point I felt comfortable with it as I'd never liked my second name much anyway; mother still hasn't entirely forgiven me for this...) and father was named after his father. I believed for years that this was a family tradition, as it's not an especially common name, but then I traced back the family tree as a present for my grandfather, and discovered that he was actually the first with that name; prior to that we had three or four generations with lots of solid names like Charles and William, and then in the early nineteenth century we move into solid biblical names like Jacob (but still quite a lot of Charleses).
@ Abahachi, Darceysdad and I have a mutual friend who has the first name as his father, grandfather and great grandfather. In order to avoid confusion within the family they are each known by their middle name. However, we know our friend by his first name so when we have had social occasions in which his family and friends are both involved confusion reigns since we all know him by a different name.
@Steenbeck, my daughter is only really known as Tess when matched up with 'immel' (Skippyisacult got the joke a few weeks ago). So far we still address her with the full Teresa, but another of the things that helped us to settle on that name was that it could be altered to various diminutives like Tess, Tessa, Teri etc. Maybe her friends will do that when she's older.
And her surname is totally unique since it's a compilation of her mother's surname and mine - all one word, no hyphens. You can do that in Britain. Unfortunately you can't do that in Austria where the rules state that she must be known by her mother's surname (since we haven't yet done the decent thing and officially got married - mind you if we were married, the Austrians would insist that she only has my surname).
Yes, endless confusion at family gatherings; it's going to be interesting to see what coping strategies my brother and sister-in-law adopt this weekend, and it may also explain why my father frequently resorts to my old nickname of 'Marvin'. And why I answer to almost anything...
Cauliflower: If you want to not stray too far with your new name, can I suggest Romanescu, it's a wonderful looking cauliflower that I grow that would keep you in the family but give allsorts of exotic connotations.
Bit late here because of a side trip to Wimbledon.
1 When I was a kid I had a model yacht, but I can't remember what I called her, sorry. Other than that it's cats and children. As I expect you know, "a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES" (TS Eliot) including the one given them by the human they live with; mine have been Shakespearean cats in the past but the present resident feline is called Drusilla after the vampire in Buffy, because she bites. My children have Biblical names which I chose because their father told me he was Jewish. (But he wasn't: see Q4.)
2 I'd like to call something after my mother but I don't know what. Not a flower, because her name was Daphne and there are already lots of those.
3 Yes. Well, I didn't recognise it, but used the clues.
4 While in the womb I was known as Paul. When this proved inappropriate they thought of Bryony: on the whole (though there are lots of different spellings, and my maternal grandfather, for instance, never got it right) I'm glad they went for Jocelyn, who was a friend of my mother's. It's a unisex name and so is my sister's (Lindsay). They did get a boy in the end though.
I do genealogy too, and half my ancestors are Scottish and followed the usual Scottish naming system in the C19. They did branch out a bit in the C20 but retained the 'family name as middle name' habit, alternating Murray and Henderson for boys. My elder grandson's middle name is Henderson. It was through my family history research that I found out my ex-husband wasn't really Jewish - unless generations of market-gardeners and wheelwrights on the Norfolk/Suffolk border are likely to be so.
Who would I like to be named after? I've always liked the name Artemis...
5 a) Make a coracle go forwards
b) No
6 No idea
7 Round the world - but there'd have to be someone on board who knew how to do it.
TFD - My father, one of my brothers, my nephew and my great nephew all have 'Campbell' as a middle name. I don't know if it's true but my dad allegedly always thought he was named after his father, but when his father (my grandfather) died they discovered his middle name was actually Cunningham. Dunno if it's true, my grandfather died long before I cm along.
That would be 'came' along.
You could always get his birth/marriage/death certificates and check...
Sorry this is so late.
1. No. I named our store and two movies, though.
2.I can't top Japanther's and Tincanman's responses. When I was younger a friend named something after me...The Adas Irrationality Factor.
3. Nope
4.Claire of Assisi, Claire Bloom, and my great aunt Nelle.
5. Pregnancy and birth seemed sort of impossible, even while I was going through them. I mean, obviously they're not, because everybody walking around it the product of them, but they just don't make any sense. Making feature films seemed impossible. Succeeded in making two, failed in getting them distributed.
6 Dunno
7. Some magical kingdom, you know, like you get to in children's books. Nowhere with sleestacks though.
@AliMunday, looks like your a prime candidate for picking up the Family History bug. It's little mysteries like that which can be really rewarded when ancestralizing.
My Dad started it because, his Dad had said that the owners of a chain of jewellers in Glasgow, who had the same surname as us, were related to us. Since my Dad and Grandad were growing up in (almost) absolute poverty on Clydeside this was always laughed off as wishful thinking.
With a few months research my Dad showed that my Grandfather was actually right. The jewellers had been founded by my great great great grandfather and we are descended from his eldest son. This would normally assure us bragging rights but what happened was that my great great grandfather, after he had been widowed in his sixties, had an affair with his housekeeper, which produced a child. When he died soon after, he left all his share in the business to the baby and left his grown-up children (including my great grandfather) a lump sum. He in turn put that into a business but it failed and so we lost contact with the jewellers and my Dad and Grandpa grew up in poverty.
One of many interesting little snippets we've discovered through the family history malarky.
Sorry I'm late.
I'm quite good at giving people nick-names that stick - so offend me at your peril. Always been a huge under-achiever, but then most ambitious people I've ever met seem to be discontented. Not sure I could handle any craft bigger than a canoe, & even then need a single paddle with two oar blades to avoid going round in circles.
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