I've got a client called Ancilla, which is Latin for slavegirl. I can't quite think what sort of parent would look at their child for the first time and think "I'll call them Slave".
But it does raise the rather interesting question of what do you name your child? I had that experience recently with my kitten, when after much deliberation, I decided to call him Chico. I thought that was a fabulous name until, 4 weeks later, the rubber-necked yellow chicken-skinned shepherd turned up on X-Factor, and made me look even more gay than normal.
Reminds me of a very funny story a friend told me. She was sitting on a bus in Hackney as two young chav-ettes discussed what to call the new sprog. The usual Chardonnay, Mercedes and Tiramisu were mentioned before one of them said "I heard a really nice name recently... Treblinka". They both loved the name...
Now, to those of you that don't know, Treblinka was the second largest concentration camp of the Second World War, where somewhere in the region of 800,000 lost their lives. And my friend never said a word, so there may be a small chav child running around in Hackney called Treblinka. Perhaps with her baby brother Gulag.
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So who's idea was Trinity Mortgages?
It was my idea, influenced partly by The Matrix and partly by Catholicism. So generally that means swishing around in black leather coats and feeling guilty about it.
And there was I thinking you just liked the sound of it, with no idea of its true meaning.
I recently read about a Polish couple who got taken to court because the government didn't want to let them name their child Christophphphpher. Yes, really. And until 1996, French parents had to name their children from a list of government-approved names, by law. That's why there are so many Jean-Pierres and Christophes, but no Pommes.
And speaking of funny Latin names, my dad's got a Coleus plant, which apparently is pretty popular in middle-class suburban gardens. I don't think they realise it's Latin for bollocks. Even better, there's a version of it called Canis Coleus.
Nuff respect to the Bexter for that. I remember Alex's dad (who was Italian) having lots of things like thing. One funny was B and Culo (instead of B&Q) which simply means B and Arse.
But my favourite of all was when we had the born again Christian neighbours round, and he offered them pots full of semen... "I have lots! You want my semen? I make it in the garden"
He was of course referring to seeds, the Italian for which is 'Seme'... I laughed for hours.
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