Potty, Fartwell & Knob

Date: 02 October 2008 20:55:53

"Potty, Fartwell & Knob: Extraordinary But True Names of British People" by Russell Ash is a fabulous little book that's ideal for the smallest room in the house - one of those you can dip in and out of. Although a book which is basically just a list of names sounds very dull, I laughed out loud a lot - it does what it says on the tin, Ash just went through birth, marriage and death records in the UK going back several centuries and wrote down all the people with silly names.

It turned out to be absolute proof that the silly names of today aren't a new phenomenon, but 'twas ever thus. Many of them sounded to me like the kind of names that Charles Dickens would have come up with if he had been channelling Harry Enfield (Ebenezer B*gger was a particular favourite of mine). I also just had to sit and shake my head at the Puritan names. Nicholas Barebon doesn't sound too daft, until you discover that his middle name was If-Jesus-Christ-Had-Not-Died-For-Thee-Thou-Hadst-Been-Damned. I guess the poor boy didn't stand a chance, what with his father's first name being Praise-God. As well as the Puritan names, there are sections for body parts, sweary words, toiletty names, sex-related names, animals and spoonerisms, amongst many others.

I definitely recommend this book - but it's not one for reading on the train, due to the laugh-out-loud potential.