Monday 11 July 2011

To Mock a Skinny Bird (and her fella)

So the Beckham girl is called Harper Seven.

It would be uncharitable of me (but entirely in character) to be snooty about this, but I'll suspend disbelief just this once. So let's assume they have read at least one book and her first name is an homage to Harper Lee and I can only make a wild guess that seven was Daddy's shirt number. If you know me at all you'll know I have a pathalogical hatred of all sport so if I'm right about the latter, hubbie will fall over in shock.

While taking the mickey out of the poor child's names would occupy me all day I am far more interested in the error that has been repeated by all the media outlets who've reported this 'news.' The potted history of the Beckham family includes the fact that they were married in 1999 and that Brooklyn is 11 years old. Now I distinctly recall he attended his parents wedding and upon checking he was indeed 4 months old when his parents married in July 1999, so why has no one noticed that he's actually 12 ? Is it the Beckham PR machine rewriting history for us or is it just a mistake ? If it is the former then someone needs to remind them of the existence of search engines and archives.

Ok, you know I wasn't going to leave the name thing alone. What is it with people giving their children more than one name ?  The number of Lily-Roses, Molly-Louises and Tyler-Jacks we meet at various groups makes my head spin. I blame celebrities for this trend and Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis in particular. If you couldn't decide on one name then maybe do the Indian thing and have a formal name  and a family name. It's a truism that a Singh who is Ranvir at work will be called Bunty at home. In my own family we each have at least 4 family names that have evolved over the years and some that we have no clue about the origin of. All I'm saying is instead of naming a child Ocean-Blue or Meadow-Amber why not go for Bunty, Sweety, Tinku or my current fave for my own son, Pookie ?

2 comments:

  1. We had a Pooks (short for Pookie) in our house for a while.
    Danny Baker's been having fun with Seven.
    Late result: Harper Seven, Dave Clark Five
    and
    So little 7 grows up to marry a German who, one day, she accuses of being full of hate. He responds, "You're sick seven. Hate? Nein!"
    He's on twitter under the name prodnose
    Makes me laugh anyway.

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  2. Thanks Paul - I do follow Candyman when I am on Twitter (which with a fast moving baby is not that often any more !!)

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