It has taken me a while to track down a copy, which I wanted not only for itself but because it makes something of a pair with the Anne Ridler poem, Choosing A Name
Surprising once, splendid or absurd
The names with which their mums & dads baptised
Those baby boys. A name is more than word;
It is a kind of garment, loose, outsized,
One which the child will slowly grow to fit.
My God, it must have taken years for those
Poor nippers easily to move & sit
Relaxed in such odd vests their parents chose –
Siegfried, Rudyard, Humbert, Algernon, Bysshe.
Later kids ere luckier, I suppose,
Were labelled closer to the way they’d wish.
Yet even then got stuck with names in tales
From women’s magazines or nominal-rolls
Of public schools (unless they came from Wales),
Names like Stephen, Christopher, Paul & Charles.
But when the second war to end all wars
Had, figuratively, seen these down the drain
Those lucky fathers, safe on Blighty’s shores,
Would nomenclate their young with names as plain
As British Restaurant meals, decent, prosaic –
Brian, Alan, Donald – note again
How disyllabic names are all trochaic.
The next lot, though, chose amputated trochees,
Monikers of one blunt syllable –
More fitting for back-woodsmen from the Rockies
Or for the darts team chalked up in your local –
Pete & Ted, Ken & Fred – yet we
Became accustomed to them in the lists
Of new contributors, & now we see
Them in the Oxford Books of that & this
Without a flicker of surprise, although
I must confess I do, a little, miss
The way those aureate Julians used to glow.
Well, tough diminutives are out & we
Must now adjust to names which look & sound
Like former surnames – Blake & Craig & Lee –
These poets’ full names could be switched around
Like those reversible coats that could provide
A quick disguise for crook or private eye.
But in the end the name is no sure guide
To excellence. The stuff we save to buy
And treasure might not bear a famous name
And, if it does, it’s no more reason why
We choose it than a picture for its frame
Vernon Scannell
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