Skip to main content

Names and associations

Valerie at a serious location, back in the black and white days
As I was sitting on the bus heading for the station the other day, I contemplated the way that associations can completely change how we view a particular name.

This came to mind as the bus headed past Cheney Manor. Given that name alone, my suspicion is that a rather splendid Tudor mansion would come to mind, either in beautifully laid out formal gardens, or possibly going a bit to seed as the owners couldn't keep it up. Definitely a des. res.

But if you know Swindon, you will probably be aware that Cheney Manor is not a distinguished old house, but an area of the town that has seen better days and whose most notable occupant is a small trading estate. The only obvious 'Manor' is one of those not entirely welcoming looking modern pubs. All-in-all, it's not exactly a National Trust tourist destination. (Sorry to any Cheney Manor residents - I'm sure it's a lovely place to live.) Suddenly, given the context, the name feels very different.

I experienced something similar as a student, but with a person's name. From my youth, I had very negative associations with the name 'Valerie'. This may have been because we had someone in our junior school class called Valerie who had an unfortunate bladder condition. Or just because it's one of those names. Either way, it felt like a name to avoid.

Then I met Valerie, who sang in the same choir. Like half of my college (or so it seemed) I fell head over heels for Valerie. And suddenly I couldn't understand my previous attitude to the name. It was a lovely name. Possibly one of the nicest girls' names ever.

Sadly for me and that half of the college, Valerie married a musician from another college, who (it was generally considered in our college) was unworthy. Strangely, soon after, the name was once more one that I really didn't like too much.

As it happens, I now know a couple of exceedingly nice Vals, and that seems a fine name to me. But I'd be grateful if they didn't tell me that it was short for Valerie.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's recent gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some ex

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5.  However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor

Which idiot came up with percentage-based gradient signs

Rant warning: the contents of this post could sound like something produced by UKIP. I wish to make it clear that I do not in any way support or endorse that political party. In fact it gives me the creeps. Once upon a time, the signs for a steep hill on British roads displayed the gradient in a simple, easy-to-understand form. If the hill went up, say, one yard for every three yards forward it said '1 in 3'. Then some bureaucrat came along and decided that it would be a good idea to state the slope as a percentage. So now the sign for (say) a 1 in 10 slope says 10% (I think). That 'I think' is because the percentage-based slope is so unnatural. There are two ways we conventionally measure slopes. Either on X/Y coordiates (as in 1 in 4) or using degrees - say at a 15° angle. We don't measure them in percentages. It's easy to visualize a 1 in 3 slope, or a 30 degree angle. Much less obvious what a 33.333 recurring percent slope is. And what's a 100% slope