Deakin researcher finds it's hard to be unique when naming children

Dr Neil Burdess’s recently published book, Hello, My Name Is… The Remarkable Story of Personal Names, traces the origins and significance of names.

Hello, My Name Is… uses examples from Anglo-Saxon kings to today’s celebrities to chart the history and importance of personal names, including given names, surnames, titles, and professional names used by authors and actors.

In his examination of given names, Dr Burdess looks at the importance of the family, gender, ethnicity, social class and fashion. For example, it’s fashionable to give girls’ names ending with an a-sound, such as Amelia, Olivia and Ava.

“There are always a number of traditional names, particularly with boys who are often named after grandfathers,” he said.

Dr Burdess has also found that it’s hard to be unique, even if you’re called Unique.

“The biggest modern trend is to have names that are ideally unique in terms of spelling or something totally new,” he said.

“Some called their daughter Unique in the hope that it was something new – but Unique is actually in the top 1000 names in the United States.”

“I keep finding examples to show nothing is new; it’s just reinvented from what people were doing some time in the past,” Dr Burdess said.

“For example, the Kardashian daughters’ names all start with a K. That was something the Anglo Saxons did in Britain about 1500 years ago.”

Dr Burdess retired in 2014 after many years at the Deakin University Warrnambool Campus. He remains an Honorary Research Fellow in Deakin’s Faculty of Arts and Education and traces his curiosity in names back to before his teenage years.

“My earliest memory of an interest in names is from before I was a teenager, when I heard names on the radio like Billy Fury and Marty Wilde,” he said.

“I kept thinking how they have such fantastic names and I here I am with a very ordinary name. Of course, that was before I realised they were stage names—but it sparked my interest.”

When it came to naming his own children, Dr Burdess had one rule.

“It was more than 30 years ago and I can’t remember how we chose the names but I know I wasn’t keen to have a Neil Junior. Donald J. Trump’s oldest son is called Donald J. Trump Jr. and his oldest son is Donald J. Trump III. I didn’t want that.”

Hello, My Name Is… The Remarkable Story of Personal Names is published by Sandstone Press.