A Rose By Any Other Name

Am I the only person that likes Baby Becks name, Harper Seven? Let’s be honest, we would all have been disappointed if they’d called her Jane. It might seem weird now but give it a few months to sink in and the latest round of copycat chavs will make it seem acceptable.

I never really thought about the responsibility parents faced when naming their children, but it’s a huge decision to have to make for someone. Do you go down the traditional or quirky route? If I was to see say, Rain Honeydew on a job application, I would most certainly expect someone to appear barefoot, chanting and smelling of patchouli. You can’t help but draw conclusions, and often forget that that person didn’t choose their name, it was their parents fault.

When pregnant with our first child we had a real struggle coming up with a boy’s name. All of the ‘normal’ boy’s names seemed too boring for this intelligent, popular and highly attractive offspring we had created, but at the same time we didn’t want to name him something totally bizarre and risk being the cause of ridicule. We went though baby name books, read the credits at the end of telly programmes and looked down every avenue in the hunt for the perfect title for our special little boy. Eventually the man came up with it while on the loo (true story, like most men, he does his best thinking there). Decision made, we stupidly asked people what they though about it. Forgetting of course that names tend to have a marmite effect, people either love them or hate them. Never ask people’s opinions about your baby name, it’s hard not to be offended when someone doesn’t like it; it’s tantamount to them not liking the baby.

If you talk to any parent about the name debate a big consideration is whether or not there will be four other children in their class with that name. They want their child to have a sense of individuality (although I think Zowie Bowie was pushing it a little). But, like everything else, certain names are fashionable, so no matter how ‘cool’ you think you are being, the likelihood is that some other parent not so far away is thinking the same thing about the name Harper or Aloicious. It’s also easy to be put off a name when you see a child with your chosen moniker behaving appallingly or with an incessantly snotty lip.

I quite like Harper, it’s nice and simple yet different. I have a problem with names that are not spelled phonetically. So I struggle with Irish names like Aoife and Siobhan because I just can’t work out how to spell them correctly. And trying to get two excited boys ready for a party is hard enough without trying to wrap my head around a random spelling situation for a birthday card. People sometimes get quite offended if you spell their kids names wrong, but I think you have to expect a certain amount of bad spelling if you have taken it upon yourself to choose a name whose spelling bears no resemblance to its pronunciation.

There are names which seem normal on the surface but are spelt in an unexpected way, just to make it seem different, or in the case of the brother and the man, because parents don’t like certain nicknames so try to avoid them being shortened to something more normal and boring. This plan will always backfire, if there is a normal and boring nickname that can be adopted it will be, children like normal and boring, and like me, like phonetic spellings.

To middle name or not? I think middle names are a great opportunity to get a little more creative, honour someone special or slip in a bit of family history. They don’t really serve any major purpose except giving you an extra initial, but R.W. Smith sounds so much more rounded and exciting than R. Smith, and of course there is the essential joy of any parent, being able to middle name you in public: “Richard Washington Smith if you do that one more time…”

What’s in a name anyway? Do we live up to our names? I think a name can provide a blueprint for how we are as a person, people with ‘weird’ names often feel like they need to prove that they are ‘normal’, and people with ‘normal’ names feel the need to prove that they are ‘special’ But as a parent, everything you do is wrong anyway and we will be blamed for their all their failings, weird name or not.

Welcome to the world Harper Seven.

Warning: Do Not Read This Blog Post

I’m a total sucker for reverse psychology, even unintentional. I was going into a garage the other day and there were cones all round the door and a huge sign saying “DANGER! Do NOT touch the door”. It took all my self control not to touch the door on my way past. Signs like that are just asking for trouble. I can often be found loitering with intent next to a wet paint sign, thinking “I wonder how wet it actually is?”

That “Do not click the red button” thing on the internet still always gets me, even though I have found myself clicking away at it knowing that nothing actually happens in the end, many, many times. Someone out there really knew how to waste people’s time. And why does Facebook seem so appealing when you’re at work and not meant to be looking at it?

I can go about my days perfectly happily not eating chocolate or stuffing cake into my face at every available opportunity, until I’m on a diet and instantly start craving Kit Kat Chunkys and ice-cream (and I normally don’t even like KitKats).

Why do I have to fight the urge to poke a knife in the toaster just to see if I really will electrocute myself? It’s not like I’m regularly standing over the toaster, knife in hand wrestling with myself, but I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a tiny part of me wondering what would happen if I touched those red stripy things with my butter knife.

We get so much information bombarded at us every second of every day no wonder we are susceptible to the most basic of human manipulation strategies.

Could the News of the World final edition also be reverse psychology at work? They say it’s the last, all proceeds to charity, now all of a sudden I am mourning its loss and rushing out to buy the final edition. And I don’t think I’ve ever actually bought it before. After all, companies use mind games like that on us all the time.

Teachers unintentionally used reverse psychology on us at school. We used to take our skirts up so people could “see what we’d had for breakfast” (that has to be the grossest but funniest line a teacher ever used on me), and every time we were told to let them down we would take them up even more. They really could have used reverse psychology to better effect there. If a teacher had said to us “You know what? Don’t wear a skirt at all tomorrow, we’d really like to see your pants” we all would have shown up in maxi skirts the very next day.

Children are very susceptible to reverse psychology. I use it often. You might call it manipulation; I call it getting out of the house on time. In fact, I use it so often and so casually I don’t even realise I’m doing it.

“My finger hurts!”

“Oh dear, maybe we should take you to the hospital, they’ll probably chop it off but you don’t really need that finger anyway do you? More peas?”

“Oh, it’s better now. Yes please, and can I have a biscuit for pudding?” I’m slightly concerned that I am doing nothing to prevent a hospital phobia in my children, but at least they don’t whine so much when they hurt themselves.

Is there something inside us that makes us want to do the opposite of what we’re told? Is it defiance, curiosity or just childishness? I will admit to all three.

So I asked the lady at the garage what would happen if I touched the door, I don’t know why but I was expecting a more exciting answer than a minibus had reversed into it leaving the whole framework of the door very unstable. Electrocution maybe, or at the very least some kind of buzzer going off and a voice coming out of nowhere saying “door has been touched, alert the guards”.

The funniest thing was that she said people had been touching it all day just to see what would happen. I wonder had they used a sign saying “Hey, touch this door now!” if everyone would have still touched it, I expect they would have. But if they had not put a sign up at all, just left the door propped open, I doubt anyone would’ve gone anywhere near it. What a bizarre bunch of folk we are.

And yes, I did touch the door on my way out, and much to my disgust, nothing happened.