What's in a name?

I apologise in advance for any offence - but hell you don't have to read it.

I was thinking this morning about the number of people that come into and out of our lives, and often, all that we remember are their names. I must have met thousands of children in my teaching life, and the names come back to me, as do the faces. My problem is matching the two lists.

Parents often don't think too hard about the names they give to their offspring, and kids may well be branded fro life with names that they hate. (I know this from personal experience.)

One of the worst combinations I ever heard of was a local family whose surname happend to be Royd, who named their daughter Emma. How cruel can you get? Another that springs to mind was the Carte family and their teenage son Orsen. I know this sounds like an exerpt from "I'm sorry I haven't a clue" but they are true.

One of my jobs when I was teaching was the setting of new intake students. I can remember looking down the lists and identifying many of the lower ability kids by their forenames. The Waynes, Shanes, Carlys, Sharons and Tracys often wound up together. (I have to say that I did in fact use their reports and not their names for the setting process)

As one's teaching career goes by, names become attached to personality types and, it is a mental picture that once formed is hard to remove. Negative images tend to stick, and there are some forenames that my own brain has stereotyped irrevocably.

Not all names of course have negative connotations, some are very agreeabele and I link with wonderful people. Some stand out as they are the only ones that I have met, but these are few and far apart. I only know one Edith, Maureen, Zena, Luke, Edmund and Gabrielle, and most of these are delightful people

Names also have a habit of coming back to haunt, because of events that have taken place in ones life. Names such as Anne, Michael, and Jack still have strong negative influences.

Maybe kids should be given numbers or temporary names until they are old enough to choose one for themselves. Then I guess we'd have some intersting school registers.