The Bluestocking - where the laugh emoji is sorely missed.

[MyrtleLion]

Welcome to the Bluestocking Arms!

The company is always sparkling, the drinks are always sublime, and the cakes are mysteriously free from gluten, sugar, calories, and troublesome booze… not that you’d ever notice. 😏

Our enthusiastic team of gerbil waitstaff is ably supported by capybaras, quokkas, and other charming creatures who excel at their jobs while looking outrageously adorable.

You will find many things to laugh at - usually out loud - so take care not to spit out your tea. We are considering a petition for the return of the laugh emoji - just as soon as the AI gerbils learn how to spell.

New Bluestockingers are always welcome. Men can pop along to The Staunch Ally nearby.

Currently also knitting a Woolly Hug blanket for Bluestockinger Swashbuckled. Details here if you can knit or crochet a square before the 18 July.

www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/5350941-woolly-hugs-desperately-sad-news-we-are-afraid-making-a-blanket-for-lovely-swashbuckled-whose-son-has-tragically-died

No, I think it's more like schools, where half the boys are called Archie, Ollie or George and half the girls are called Ellie, Evie or Olivia.

I've never quite got a grip on naming fashions, but maybe that's inherited, because my genealogy work has a habit of turning up, let's say, three successive generations of Williams who all married Margarets.

And don't even start me on villages with only three surnames.

Or companies where hiring policy is at least 60% Daves (DH’s first job - this is honestly no exaggeration!) or Mike and Steve (mine, in the 80s - it’s a lot more diverse now).

I used to do hiring in a certain industry where, I swear, if I had a shortlist of six guys five of them would be called Steve. We might get a Kevin for diversity.

That made me laugh

True fact: 50% of the people on my degree course had the same first name.

When I first started at my last school the Head, the Deputy Head and the heads of several departments were all called John.

At the time there were girls only in the sixth form and very few female teachers, which only partly explains it. It’s probably the thing about statues which was said a few years ago, where there were more statues of men called John than there were of women.

I also had an U6 set of six students, none related to each other, with only three different surnames between them. Later I had a y7 set of twelve students, which included three sets of twins - coincidentally all boys.

Was it John, @Boiledbeetle?

What, 'Boiled'? Well that's weird. I missed that being fashionable.

I know! Who'd have thunk it!

June not John, but how bizarre all those John's were at your school. Were they all of a similar age?

One thing I found that cracked me up was a marriage record where the bride, the groom and both of the witnesses all had the same surname. In fact the groom had the exact same name as the bride's father.

I hate to stereotype, but there's a history of cousin marriage on the North West Frontier (or, as we call it, Tyrone and Donegal)

I suppose they were, broadly speaking. Perhaps aged 35 - 55? Any younger and they’d be too young to be head of anything, any older and they would be about to retire.

On a related thought, I can’t remember when I last taught anyone called John.

I think its time is coming, given how many admirers Boiled has on MN.

That, and the people who have randomly come across the books Boiled has edited, and read them while pregnant.

My mother read The Forsyte Saga novels when she was expecting me. I was nearly called Fleur.

Surely the gerbils are doing A Midsummer Night's Dream?

Gerbil naming is a great mystery. Never try to unpick the Gormlaiths, all forever forming dynastic alliances with each other's brothers, sons, husbands, and anygerbil over at the Staunch Ally who happens to be king of a handy looking territory. If you look crosswise at them they come over all regal and tend to start wars. Otoh, they are good at embroidery, storytelling and music, and at least one of them is rumoured to have had a continental education.

At my junior school I was in a class of 46 children, one of whom was called Susan.
Went to secondary school ( posh one, scholarship girl) and out of 33, there were five Susans. They're multiplying!

Very glad not to be Susan.

At the last place where I worked, about half the staff consisted of pairs of people who shared a name - two called Donna, two called Michelle etc etc.

I don't think it was deliberate policy on the part of the head, but she employed me and then a couple of years later we were joined by someone who shared my name...Just as one of the Donnas was due to retire.

Bit niche, but all the apple growers I've come across are called Nigel. However, not all Nigels are apple growers.

Craft group is fortunate to be well supplied with Margarets, all of whom use their full name. Quite right too.

I think it must be my age, but I know far more Richards and Simons than is at all feasible, too. The Richards are generally slightly older than the Simons.

Names are funny things aren't they? When you name a baby, perhaps initially your only thoughts are hopefully there won't be some way of garbling their name when they're at primary school. Or that might just be in southern England, I don't know. In the Scottish Islands, a lot of traditional naming takes place so that there are a great number of children called Murdo or Eilidh or Mary Catherine or Donald, sometimes there are more than one in the same family. There was a family in South Uist where all of the children (six boys) were named Donald after their father. There must have been a second name or nickname by which they were known otherwise mealtimes would have been ever so confusing.

I think in a previous discussion I’ve mentioned the naming of Pratchett’s Nac Mac Feegles ‘No'-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock’, a Gonnagle-in-training.

I worked with a Welshman who said he had a relative called Hopkin Hopkin Hopkin ("christened in an echo chamber"). Made me laugh down the 'phone to the angry person I was speaking to

I once had a work colleague whose middle names were Mary Bernadette and all of her many sisters were also called Mary Bernadette.

In the Irish-speaking ['Gaeltacht'] areas of Ireland, surnames are a bit of an aside, the traditional way of naming people - I mean referring to them, not picking their name - is First Name-Father's First Name-Grandfather's First Name, or the same using the mother's/grandmother's name.
I'm not sure how the mother/father's name thing developed in different areas.

So if your name was Susan, and your dad was John, and your grandfather was Simon, you'd be Susan John Simon, or Susan Margaret Elizabeth [Susan Peg Lizzie, more likely] and you'd only use your surname for official purposes.

And if there were five other Susans in the same village, they'd all be distinguishable because there'd be a different father's/grandfather's/mother's/grandmother's name.

It's very useful as Irish surnames were often clan names, so by definition there'd be swathes of the same name in one area, and there'd be a heck of a lot of Patricks and Marys and Annes and Josephs.

It's also fun - you know that thing, how to generate your er...'adult-entertainment-star' name: 1. the name of your first pet and 2. the name of the street/road where your grandparents lived?
Well you can now generate your what-I'd-be-called-on-the-Aran-Islands name 😄

That's funny because I've always joked about meeting someone from the Donegal Gaeltacht called 'Hughie Hughie Hughie' but yon Welsh lad beat me to it😄