What's in a name?

The importance of being Daisy...

I was at a party in Nantucket this summer when something unusual happened, I met a woman called Daisy who was older than me. That sounds unremarkable , but for all of my sixty three years I have been the oldest Daisy I know. My mother named me after the heroine of the Great Gatsby, Daisy Buchanan, the novel she was reading just before she gave birth to me in December 1961. ‘Gatsby’ had been a commercial failure when it was first published in 1925, but in the postwar years it began its ascent into one of the great books of the twentieth century, so that it had become fashionable reading for a twenty something bluestocking about to give birth. My mother who was called Jocasta, liked the idea of naming me after Daisy Buchanan, the southern belle whose voice was’ full of money’. In this, as in so many other things she was ahead of her time. At school, and then university I never met another Daisy. In the sixties and seventies it was a name that made people say, ‘ oh my great aunt was called Daisy,’ or ‘ I know a cow called Daisy,’ or they would start humming the Victorian parlour song that begins, “ Daisy, Daisy give me your answer do?” Why every child at every school I went to knew that song I can’t imagine, but it followed me in various tuneless renditions throughout my early life, and as far as I can remember it was always tinged with barely concealed mockery. At the boy’s school I went to for my A levels it would follow me as I walked across ‘Yard’ to my lessons, some of the singers were still trebles. My less musical followers would just shout , ‘ Good one’. my name was a lexicographical playground for teenage boys. Still it was better than a nickname, one unfortunate contemporary was called ‘ the honey monster’. My contemporaries were called Samantha, Penny, Lisa or Caroline - names that were at their peak of popularity in the 1960’s, but are now as unfashionable as Daisy was then. They can walk through playgrounds without anyone telling them to get down from the slide AT ONCE. I went through my childhood and early adult life being the only Daisy in town but now they are everywhere.

The nonagenarian I met in Nantucket was a Hungarian Jew, born in Budapest before the Second World War. I wonder if her mother had named her after Daisy Buchanan, or whether she had chosen Daisy because it was an English name at a time when nationalism and anti semitism was taking hold in Central Europe. In England the name had already fallen out of fashion, but in Budapest in the thirties it still had cachet.

Daisy began as a pet name for Margaret, ( a Marguerite is the French name for a daisy) but by the 1860’s it had become a name in its own right - as flower names became fashionable in the Victorian era. A victorian matron might cover her walls with intricate floral patterns from Morris and Co and name her daughters Ivy, Lily, Holly, Iris, Rose even Amaryllis as well as Daisy. Henry James used it as the name for the free spirited heroine of his 1878 novella Daisy Miller.

This Daisy is an innocent abroad in Rome who scandalises her uptight compatriots with her flirtatious behaviour. But unlike Daisy Buchanan who literally gets away with murder, this Daisy catches malaria on a visit to the Coliseum and dies.

In my teenage years I had one literary minded admirer who used to write to me from America. In one letter he cut out a paragraph from a paperback edition of the Great Gatsby and sellotaped it to the page. I don’t have the letter any more so I don’t know which paragraph it was, but I do remember being surprised that he had defaced a book. Why couldn’t he have copied it out? Perhaps he was making a point about the interplay between my namesake in the text and his perception of me, or possibly he was just lazy. He had an even more unusual name than mine ( I won’t reveal to spare his blushes) so he might have been trying to reassure me with the face that at least I was in print. The relationship did not flourish.

In the early 80’s I went to graduate school in New York and was quite routinely addressed as David when I gave my name over the phone. The country that had produced the two most famous literary Daisies did not recognise me. Until that is another American writer, Judith Krantz wrote a novel called Princess Daisy which became a successful mini series. Suddenly my name became a matter of celebration-

“ Oh Daisy as in Princess. What can I for you, your highness.” It was a very happy time.

I have a soft spot for a real Princess Daisy - who married the Prince of Pless who gave her on her marriage the world’s longest pearl necklace. She kept a domesticated wolf at their castle in Poland, and made money after divorcing the Prince by publishing her gloriously indiscreet diaries. I have less to say about the Princess Daisy who graces the Mario Bros franchise.

I sometimes wonder what my life would have been like if I had been called something else. When I was eight I longed to be called Venetia, which tells you quite a lot about my eight old self. I thought Venetia sounded aristocratic - plus no one had goldfish or hamsters called Venetia. I tried to introduce it at home, but it didn’t catch on. My mother said, “ Venetia sounds like a pretentious lady novelist.” I became reconciled to my name when I read ‘the Young Visiters’ ( sic) by Daisy Ashford.

I remember reading the book, and thinking how good the name Daisy looked on on a title page. Ashford wrote the book when she was nine, and it became a bestseller when it was published in 1919. She made so much money from the book that she was able to buy a farm with the proceeds, saying “ I like fresh air and royalties.” I couldn’t agree more.

Names do matter. Would Gone with the Wind have become a sensation if Margaret Mitchell had not changed at the last minute changed her heroine’s name from Pansy to Scarlett? Would the nineteenth century have felt different if Britain’s queen had not changed her name from Alexandrina ( the name she was known as throughout her childhood) to Victoria? Did the eighteen year old queen consciously adopt a ‘ winning’ name? What makes her choice even more interesting is that there were no other Victorias at the time.( Victoria was the anglicicization of her mother’s name Victoire) So not only was she a teenage queen - she was also one with a unique name. I like to think that the young princess, who had grown up under the highly restrictive Kensington system imposed by her mother and her mother’s advisor Sir John Conroy, decided that she would draw a line between her old and her new life when she came to the throne . As a teenager she had adored going to the opera and the ballet and perhaps Victoria was to her a stage name - a name that gave her a confidence and trajectory that she needed to reign.

I didn’t change my name when I got married. It never occurred to me. I am still surprised when women do . Partly for feminist reasons, but if I am totally honest because it is such a positive surname - I have never wanted to give it up.

Everyone has a nominative determinism story. My father’s accountant was called Norman Swindell which in the world of show business did him no harm. My dermatologist is called Dr. Roest, ( I haven’t dared ask her whether she changed the a to an e). There is no scientific evidence for a correlation between name and occupation, but I can’t help feeling that it must have something to do with a sense of humour. I mean if your name is Splatt urology is an obvious choice, as accountancy is for a Swindell. Surely Miriam Payne and Jess Rowe felt that they had no choice but to cross the Pacific Ocean from Peru to Australia in a rowing boat?

When I called my oldest daughter Ottilie in the early 90’s, I did so on a whim. I was reading an article about Westdene, the country house owned by the Surrealist fancier Edward James. He had married a Viennese dancer called Ottilie ( Tilly) Losch and had a stair carpet made with her footprints going from top to bottom.

In my post natal state I knew that this was the perfect name for my infant daughter. It raised a few eyebrows at the time - but I explained that it was a German name , my husband is half German. I didn’t know any other Ottilies, apart a character in a novel by Goethe, and the jazz singer Ottilie Paterson. But such is the weird cultural osmosis that causes names to become fashionable - about ten years later I started to see Ottilies everywhere ( or at least in Boden catalogues). My younger daughter even had one in her class. It is now officially in the top 100 names in the country. I thought I was being idiosyncratic but in fact I was part of an inexorable nominative tide.

My brother who is two years younger than me is called Jason. My mother claimed

the name was suggested to her by a nurse in the maternity ward. At the time she thought what a splendid classical name. What she didn’t know, because she didn’t watch television, was that it was a name that had become hugely popular on account of a tv series called Jason King, played by the magnificently moustached Peter Wyngarde. As a result Jason was always one of many ( my brother in law is also called Jason) , while I was the odd one out. My mother was rather put out when she discovered that instead of being ahead of the curve she was right at its peak. My brother is famously charming and I wonder if his ability to cast a verbal spell over anyone is a result of wanting to distinguish himself from all those other Jasons - to be the ‘ charming Jason’ is no bad thing.

In my rational mind I know that names have no more significance than being born under a certain star sign. Any correlation between rampantly egoism and people who are born in August under the sign of Leo is simply confirmation bias. But when I think of a Daisy, a day’s eye, I can’t help feeling but feel that like my namesake I may be commonplace but at least I’m fresh.