Читать книгу Hatches, Matches and Despatches - Jenny Paschall - Страница 13

UNTIL the 1970s, French families were not free to choose just any name for their children – they had to pick names from an official list kept by the Ministry of the Interior.

IN ancient Rome, naming children was pretty difficult too – there were only twenty first names ever used for males.

MUHAMMAD is the most common first name in the world, Chang is the most common surname. We have yet to find a Muhammad Chang though!

BRIAN Brown of Wolverhampton was such a big boxing fan that when his daughter was born in 1974, he named her after twenty-five world heavyweight champions – Maria Sullivan Corbett Fitzsimmons Jeffries Hart Burns Johnson Willard Dempsey Tunney Schmeling Sharkey Carnera Baer Braddock Louis Charles Walcott Marciano Patterson Johanssen Liston Clay Frazier Foreman Brown.

EQUALLY unfortunate was the daughter of Peter O’Sullivan, a fan of the Liverpool football team of the sixties. When she was born, her proud dad named her after the entire team: Paula St John Lawrence Lawler Byrne Strong Yeats Stevenson Callaghan Hunt Milne Smith Thompson Shankly Bennett Paisley O’Sullivan. On official documents, she used the name Paula St John etc O’Sullivan.

A Japanese couple who won a free honeymoon courtesy of the German airline Lufthansa were so grateful for their wonderful trip to Germany and their romantic stay in the Black Forest that when their son was born nine months later, they named him ‘Lufthansa’.

ARTHUR Pepper had his daughter christened in 1883, with the name Anna Bertha Cecilia Diana Emily Fanny Gertrude Hypatia Inez Jane Kate Louisa Maud Nora Ophelia Quince Rebecca Sarah Teresa Ulysses Venus Winifred Xenophon Yetty Zeus Pepper – one name for every letter of the alphabet.

MR and Mrs James Williams felt that their own names were pretty uninspired, so when their daughter was born on 12 September 1984 in Beaumont, Texas, they named her: Roshandiatellyneshiaunneveshenkkoyaanfsquatsiuty.

ON 8 November 1847, Dr James Young Simpson, professor of midwifery at Edinburgh University, first used chloroform as an anaesthetic in the delivery of the wife of a fellow surgeon. She was so delighted with the painless delivery that she named her daughter Anaesthesia.

IN 1971 Grace Slick officially named her daughter ‘god’. When she was asked why she registered the name with a small g, she replied, ‘Because we’ve got to be humble about this.’