WHAT’S in a name? Well, if given to a child it can forever determine their position at the bottom end of Britain’s hierarchy. There will be no social climbing for these:
Loughborough
The aristocracy have historically singled themselves out by naming their spawn after exotic locations like Delphi or Arcadia. As usual, the lower orders have corrupted this proud tradition with their own knuckleheaded interpretation. Paris and Brooklyn are bad enough, but proper rough kids are named after a Midlands university famous for sport science degrees.
Tiphanee
The working classes didn’t learn standardised spelling in school. They were too busy earning their keep on a barm cake factory floor, which has resulted in their own children being slapped with knock-offs of real names which haven’t quite got the vowels right. It’s different when posh parents do it, that’s personal branding.
Sports Direct
Why call a child Versace or Hermes or John Lewis when you can go straight to the source? Bearing the nomenclature of a high street sporting outlet has many positives: your name on a mug, guaranteed warehouse work when you turn 16, and everyone’s automatically affectionate to you because of their pre-existing love for the brand.
Pigeon
Animal names are a trend among the upper classes, with Mouse and Panda climbing in popularity. Less privileged parents can do the same by drawing on the world around them. Screeching Mid-Shag Fox is an inappropriate and something of a mouthful, but Pigeon works. One of those city ones that’s lost a half a foot and pecks at cigarette ends.
Tarquin
Once reserved for foppish scions of the baronetcy, it’s gone down society faster than Burberry and now appears regularly on council estates by parents trying to move upmarket. Expect flat-roofed pubs of the near future to be run by a thuggish dealer named Tarquin and his XL bullys Sixtus and Sevenus.
Robbie
A nice, normal name which has playfully taken the edge off the ending? Nothing could be more working class than that. You can practically picture his soot-covered face skipping to work down cobbled streets as he whistles excruciatingly. If he was a social climber he’d have a more aspirational name like Tesla or Joffrey.
