What's in a name?

My German friend Heidy posted this on Facebook :

 "I tried to look up the German idiom: "Heute musste ich wirklich *meinen inneren Schweinehund überwinden*" and came across some reasonable translations, such as "to overcome one's weaker self", but I also found this one: "to conquer one's inner pigdog"... lol"

I also took a look in an online dictionary and found: den inneren Schweinehund überwinden - to conquer one's inner self. 

Funnily enough, I remember "Schweinehund" as a common insult in all those old WWII movies you used to see on television in the fifties and sixties. I found this confirmation online: 

"Schweinehund 

 1) an German insult, that is more popular in British movies than in Germany itself. 

2) "blutiger Schweinehund" (bloody swinehound), even more popular in British movies. 

3) "innerer Schweinehund" (your inner swinehound), means the enemy inside yourself that makes you passive. 

John Cleese is a bloody Schweinehund." 

Heidy and I have decided that we are going to try to introduce the expression "to conquer your inner pigdog" into everyday English usage. After all, stranger things happen in this language of ours. 

There is an actress called Tuppence Middleton!! She is one of those people-of-the-moment, suddenly to be seen on screens all over the place, at present playing the wicked Hélène Kuragin in the television version of War and Peace. It seems she was called Tuppence because that was her mother's childhood nickname. How could her mother inflict that on her? As a nickname I'm sure it's fine but would you want it on your passport? Most of us grow out of our childhood nicknames! Or they are used only in intimate family moments, not exposed to the ridicule of the wider world. Mind you, it may be that being called Tuppence gave her a sense of being different and may even have helped her acting career. I must admit, I thought at first that it was her stage name and that she must have a "proper" name as well. Apparently not! 

Names are funny things. Recently Phil huffed and puffed about someone being called Holly, a name which has become very popular in probably the last twenty years. As he protested about it, I had a flashback to a children's birthday party some fifteen years or more ago. My niece was hosting a party for one of her children and one of the small guests was called Holly. My niece's older sister (also, of course, my niece - in fact, the first one I ever had), rather the worse for having downed several glasses of wine too many, declared in a loud voice, "HOLLY!? What kind of name is that? It's not a person's name; it's a tree, for goodness sake!" Well, yes, quite so. 

And yet, there are loads of Hollys (or Hollies) around now. And way back in 1958 Truman Capote named the protagonist of "Breakfast at Tiffany's" Holly Golightly! 

And here's another thing: nobody found it odd that there were girls called Ivy forty or fifty years ago. (Maybe that will be the next name to be revived!) 

We have Holly and we used to have Ivy. We just need Mistletoe as a name and you could name your triplets in a good Christmassy way!