What's in a name?
Woman's Hour
BBC
4.1 • 3K Ratings
🗓️ 31 December 2020
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What do our first names really say about us? More than you might think, according to Dr Jane Pilcher, Associate Professor at the University of Leicester. She claims that our names often reveal important clues about our age, social class and ethnicity that might affect the way that we are treated by other people. She joins Jane, along with name expert and the founder of the British Baby Names website, Eleanor Nickerson to discuss what's in a name.
How has this classic British name become synonymous with being middle of the road? The actor Jane Asher turned 71 earlier this month and was born in the year that Jane entered the UK top 50. Jane Brody celebrated her 30th birthday last week and was born the year after Jane stopped being a UK top 100 name.
Woman's Hour listener Victoria Smillie wanted to change her surname following her divorce, but realised in doing so that she had never been happy with her given name, Lesley, either. So she changed both. They are joined by another of our listeners, Tracy, who truly hates her name but can't quite bring herself to lose it. By the age of three, Esther Robertson had had three different first names and surnames. Esther joins Jane to discuss how her changing name has affected her life.
The author Charlotte Mendelson keeps lists of names and can deliberate for hours about what to call the characters in her novels. She joins us along with the journalist and editor Alex Clark to discuss the best and worst names in books.
Presenter: Jane Garvey Producer: Laura Northedge.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.6 | My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
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| 0:41.0 | This is the Woman's Hour Podcast. Good morning. Welcome to the program. The |
| 0:46.3 | subject today is names, partly because I've had a bit of it a bee in my |
| 0:50.6 | Woman's Hour bonnet for quite some time about being called Jane |
| 0:54.0 | which some people think is a little bit dull |
| 0:56.7 | some of those people who think is a little bit dull |
| 0:58.8 | include me which is why I wanted to investigate the subject of names and whether they actually really do impact |
| 1:05.0 | on your life in any significant way. |
| 1:07.6 | So we're going to talk very seriously about names, about there's one listener taking part |
| 1:11.0 | this morning, whose name was changed three times when she was |
| 1:13.8 | just a little girl. You can hear two from a woman who changed her name because frankly she |
| 1:18.1 | hugely disliked it. There's another listener who almost did but then decided not to and is still |
| 1:23.7 | Tracy a slightly unwilling one and we also talk too about the significance of |
| 1:29.0 | names in literature now we're not live today we'd still like your input you can |
| 1:33.9 | email the program via the website anytime you like or tweet away at BBC |
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