*Pic: Image from HERE
Recently I was in Flanagan’s Bar in the Victoria Hotel in downtown Shepparton.
Outside it was a stinking hot afternoon. Inside, the joint was characterless, cavernous and empty but happily the beer was ice-cold and served by a pleasant young woman called Tamara Sinclair.
She had an attractive open face, nice eyes and, of course, a first name that starts a conversation, as names often do. “My mum liked it. I don’t know where it came from. She might have made it up. It’s a bit strange but after twenty years I’m used to it,” she laughed.
I was able to assure her that ‘Tamara’ wasn’t made up recently and that I’d come across it before. It’s an old Hebrew name and it crops up a few times in the Bible. “I’m not a Bible-basher,” I hastened to tell her. “But I grew up on the Tamar River in Tasmania and we learned at school that Tamara’s a girl’s name and it means ‘date palm’.”
She seemed pleased to learn that her name wasn’t just one of those concocted handles like Jorja or Princ’ess or Rybekkah, all of which however do have the same meaning: ‘my parents had too many Jack Daniels and Coke’.
Tamara was heavily pregnant. Thirty-three weeks, she told me. A boy. Obvious question: “Ah that’s nice. What are you going to call him?”
Unusual answer: “Noah.”
Pregnant pause: “Really!”
Well I was surprised at the time because I don’t know a lot of Noahs apart from the apocryphal bloke with the floating menagerie. Since meeting Tamara I have discovered there are in fact a number of kiddies who will grow up coming to terms with that name. How little I knew! There has been a flood of Noahs. I saw one website listing Noah as the second most popular baby name in Australia last year.
Poor little buggers!
“G’day Noah. You expectin’ rain?”
“Hey Noah it’s d’ark. Switch on the flood lights!”
And if the Noahs get understandably annoyed, they will be told …
“Hey Noah, there’s no need to ark up!”
But Noah is a lot better than Asha, Aayden, Ambah, Bailee, Blaik, Bodie, Brianan, … and I’m only browsing the first two letters of the alphabet. Can you imagine any kid with those names getting to be Prime Minister of Australia or a captain of Corporate Industry?
“The Chairman of BHP-Billiton, Mr. Bailee Bridge today announced a record profit of a trillion dollars …”
“The Prime Minister, Ms. Ambah Light announced that the date of the next General Election would not be until next …”
In your dreams Aayden and Ambah! Your parents have condemned you to a form of nominal predestination where if you can sing and dance a bit you might still get on ‘Australia’s Got Talent’.
But seriously, even if you are smarter than your oldies, how are you going to get to the top of the everyday world with names like Bailee or Ambah, or a thousand like them? It’s a form of child abuse and it shouldn’t be allowed.
Nor is it allowed in some nations. I don’t as a rule like the State interfering in the private affairs of citizens unless someone is being harmed. But how could you disagree with the recent decision that the name ‘Nutella’ was potentially harmful to the child who would have to carry it through life.
A French court determined that, given ‘Nutella’ is the trademark of a well-known spread, “It is contrary to the child’s interests to be wearing a name that can only lead to teasing or disparaging thoughts.”
Thanks to that wise French judge little ‘Nutella’ is now ‘Ella’.
The kid got her first lucky break, now if she can just get herself adopted her future will be a whole lot brighter.
Denmark, Iceland and Sweden are among many other countries where a child’s name must be judiciously considered so that the more dimwitted and fanciful creations are ruled out. Those wiser Nordic jurisdictions would probably exclude half the names appearing in the birth notices of this newspaper.
It is a bit close to home, even for me, to list them here and certainly for my editor who would not want to offend the hand that feeds. But I do wonder if the nice ladies working in the classified ads department are ever tempted to sound a helpful note of restraint. “You want to call your baby Zainee Afernee Jones. Let’s see. Is that a boy or a girl?”
(And no I didn’t just make up those names)
Study the names in Criminal Court proceedings and you might wonder if there is not some form of nominal predestination at work, (the defendants I mean rather than the lawyers).
Not enough sociological research has been done yet for me to wade into those dangerous waters. Nor do I want Zaidee, Afernee or Ambah on my case, should they read this. But the point remains, more research is urgently needed.
William Shakespeare of course got it wrong with Juliet’s:
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would
Smell as sweet”
Easy for him to say. Try knocking out a few plays under the name of Bailee or Ayden or Aferneee and see if people are still quoting you five hundred years from now. About as likely as John Wayne making it to be the big macho Hollywood star he was, if he’d stuck with the handle his parents inflicted on him; ‘Marion’.
Anyway back to the pregnant Tamara in the Victoria Hotel in Shepparton.
When I last saw her, she had decided to drop the name ‘Noah’ and go with her Dad’s name ‘Peter’.
My work there was finished.
Footnote: To get a kid’s perspective on this story I asked my son, Jim, to peruse it before it went to print. His reaction was “What’s wrong with ‘Noah’? I’ve got lots of friends called Noah. It’s just a name.”
So now I’m changing Jim’s name to Afernee.
