Thousands of words have been written on the subject of names and whether they define us or are entirely tangential. I’m not about to go into the philosophy of this question but the phenomenon of nominative determinism is interesting nonetheless. Of course traditionally many surnames come from professions or trades, so it’s not surprising that a Baker should be good at baking. But how do you explain Usain Bolt, Mary Berry or the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, Igor Judge? Does the name lead them towards these occupations or is something else going on?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism
Names go in and out of fashion; I never thought that our grandchild would be called Henry or Maisie as to my mind these are very old-fashioned. That’s easy to explain as the parents usually choose the names. What’s harder to account for is that surnames seem to change too. Nobody is called Sidebottom or Clutterbuck any more, at least not that I know of – perhaps because they’d be mercilessly ridiculed on social media or perhaps because people are more self-conscious about their names nowadays. Some of the differences are obviously due to immigration; there are a lot more Singhs, Patels and Khans than there were fifty years ago; others can be explained by history. Anyone with a German name in the first half of the twentieth century would have felt constrained to change it – hence Saxe-Coburg Gotha became Windsor and the writer Ford Hueffer became Ford Madox Ford. Women are increasingly declining to change their names on marriage or else opting for a double-barrelled name, hence a surname which once indicated aristocracy is now more likely to mean you are married and joined your names together.
I can’t believe there’s only a week till the election. Five weeks have gone by since that inexplicably damp announcement, since when the Tories have slid further and further downhill thanks to lacklustre campaigning and the betting scandal. Once again, just when you think they can’t sink any lower, they do – one guy even bet on himself to lose his seat! It’s utterly repugnant.
https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/philip-davies-accused-placing-8k-bet-lose-seat-election-3134192
It’s not a done deal though and the biggest fear is that Labour voters will think it’s in the bag and not bother to turn out. I really hope that doesn’t happen, though I can’t see them losing even if it does.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68079726
Happy Thursday. Episode 3 of Clouds will be up later.
Sarada Gray 
Instances of nominative determinism can be quite amusing sometimes; almost as if the child chose the parent on the basis of the family name: hmmm………. My married elder daughter has retained her family name, and her first & probably only daughter has a hyphenated family name from both parents; if she has a male child, my family name can continue. I’m not hubristically concerned that the name shouldn’t die out in my line, but I would be sad if it did; I do have nephew, albeit in Californeyeaye, who has male children. Cheers, Jon.
The child chooses the parent. Interesting idea.
Totally unscientific, but science can’t explain everything, IMHO.
Definitely not – or not yet. It would be an interesting idea to put in a short story
Names definitely indicate age to some degree. I don’t know anyone caller Peter who is under 60. As for my surname, ‘The Johnson surname is primarly English and Scottish, and has a patronymic origin. It’s the 154th most common around the world, and the second most common name in the United States.’
I was doing okay with it until Boris became a celebrity. Then I had to fend off silly remarks asking if I was related to him.
Best wishes, Pete.
I didn’t know your surname was Johnson. Interestingly, his has a Germanic bit as he’s Boris de Pfeffel Johnson. The Pfeffel bit sounds like a noise he would have made