Friday, May 16, 2008
Rum work still pulled round the font
Britain's Youngest Grannies on BBC Three began with a clip from an early '70s BBC show in which a glamorous granny was a carefully-coiffed lady in her 70s dressed along the lines of the Queen. It went on to introduce us to three contemporary women in their thirties who had all had daughters in their teens, daughters who had returned the compliment by doing the same thing. They were very different families but all gave birth to girls who were given names like Rickeita, Lexi, Casie, Lalah and Aliyah. The naming of children gives us away. We tend to choose names that we hope they can grow into. Unless, that is, we secretly don't want them to grow up at all.
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I think it's nice to choose names that will suit the child for every life stage. Personally, I like Kate, Katy when they're a baby, child and teenager. Kate when they're a woman and Kitty when they're old.
ReplyDeleteMy advice would be to get those kids on the pill as soon as possible.
ReplyDeleteSlightly off-topic, but the crypto fascist behind my liberal exterior has often thought that the social problems of Britain could be solved by sneaking contraceptive drugs into the 'food' at McDonald's. It's a slow burnig plan, I grant you, but the results would start to show themselves at schools after about 5 years and spread through society from there.
ReplyDeleteThere's some good stuff on names in Freakenomics. Basically its aspirational but from someone outside of your direct circle. The move towards new names and different spellings is also discussed - all about fitting in and being different I recall.
ReplyDeleteI don't see this as a "social problem". All these girls were beyond the reach of a stern talking-to. They were not social security basket cases. They were potentially good mothers. The problem was they couldn't wait to go through the allegedly transformational experience of motherhood. Once that was accomplished they were left to contemplate an endless morning after.
ReplyDeleteThe issue is one of grammar.
ReplyDeleteCouncil types make very little use of the future tense, are never corrected by their poorly-motivated teachers, and as a consequence never develop the ability to visualise the consequences of their actions: That's why they commit crime or have babies or do all those other things that seem inexplicable to us Lynne Truss acolytes.