A LADY AT LEISURE
‘A member of our extended family went from being boring old Lisel Ward to film-star- sounding Lisel de la Fontaine’
A lady at leisure W
hat’s in a name? Armstrong and MacGregor both sound nicely lawless. I suppose it’s the rebel in me,
but who wants to come from boring stock? I’m sure we’d all rather have a gangster or a cattle thief to boast about, rather than a preacher. So, no problem with surnames, then. But,
when it comes to first names, I’ve always wished I could have been something else. Fiona is way too posh for my liking. I see myself much more as a Susie, or a Carrie, or even a Holly. But, thinking about it, I probably got off lightly. When my mother was expecting, she was
toying with the idea of Araminta or Samantha. So I could actually have been a Min-Min, or a Sam-Sam, instead of the Fi-Fi she still insists on calling me loudly in shops and restaurants, much to my embarrassment. But then my mama has always been reck-
less with names. She was born Pauline, but has been variously Paulina, Paula and Polly over
As you get older, you get the chance to reinvent yourself – starting with your name WORDS FIONA ARMSTRONG ILLUSTRATION BOB DEWAR
the years. At the moment she answers to Poppy, which is her prerogative, I suppose. My father, meanwhile, is plain old Robert – and he’s just thankful he got the best of the ’berts: think Egbert, Albert, Cuthbert, Gilbert and Herbert and you’ll understand. As it is, he gets called Bob, and when they say ‘Bob’s your uncle’, I can pipe up with ‘no, Bob’s my dad’. As you get older, you can completely reinvent
yourself. A member of our extended family went from being boring old Lisel Ward to film- star-sounding Lisel de la Fontaine. It suits the girl: with a curvy frame and flowing locks, she wouldn’t be out of place on a Hollywood poster. Lisel went the whole hog and changed her name by deed poll. But you don’t have to take such drastic measures. As I understand it, legally you can call yourself what you like, when you like: which is fine, until they ask for official proof such as a birth certificate. Some names, though, you’re just stuck with,
especially if you’re from an ancient family. Take the very English Horneyold Stricklands. It’s an unforgettable title, and I bet they’ve taken some stick at school over the generations. Can you imagine the endless sniggers and having to repeat it every time you spoke to someone on the phone? But gaze enviously at Sizergh, their iconic Cumbrian castle, and you’d probably settle for a bit of name-ribbing too. I ask the MacGregor what he would like to
have been called and he looks blankly back at me. ‘Why, just what I am,’ he says as he disappears, shotgun in hand, to give the colony of grey squirrels that have taken up residence at the end of the garden another awful fright. I suppose it’s good to be married to a man who’s comfortable in his own skin. At least Fiona is a Scottish designation – and
rather an ancient one at that. It came to fame in the 18th century when the writer James Macpherson produced his heroic ‘Ossian’ poetry, with evocative lines like ‘let the sons of Fiona rise’. So I can at least take comfort in that. And Fiona means ‘fair’, naturally…
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