Fame at last for Minty Badger and Peter Piddle

I’m glad to see that someone has finally written a book about silly British names: Potty, Fartwell And Knob: Extraordinary But True Names Of British People. The book celebrates the fact that our countryfolk can (and do) call their children unbelievably silly things such as Constant Pain, Florence May Pee, Nicholas Orgy and Gertrude Obedience Goose. So what do children think about their parents’ joke at their expense? Or were some of the names a genuine a mistake? I heard of two Liverpudlian girls called Pat Mycock and Adora Dick respectively whose parents hadn’t a clue what they had done until the playground enlightened them. Admittedly, sometimes the fault is not down to the parents at all but the result of a tragic decision to move to the wrong country. For instance, the little Chinese girl called Wi Mee (pronounced “why me” earned sniggers from her classmates and fury on the part of her teacher when asked for her name in class and forced to respond. Let’s hear it for little Wi and the owners of some of those other truly silly British names: Minty Badger, Peter Piddle and Matilda Suckcock.