What's in a name?

Names are funny things. Some people don't like the names they are given; my mother always objected to being named Phylis, insisted on it being shorten to Phyl, and when my younger sister was born on her birthday refused point blank to inflict that name on her. And yet your name defines you in some way and makes you unique.

I know people who have gone out of their way to choose what they thought was an unusual name for their new offspring, only to discover that that very name was "trending", was appearing in the list of the top ten most popular names, and thus their poor child was going to be one of many with that name in their class. I remember a class I taught which had no fewer than seven Julies!

When I started to learn French, many years ago, our French teacher gave us all French names; she was young and super-enthusiastic, full of new ideas for motivating pupils. Mine was Antoinette, which is quite ironic as many people here in Galicia assume that my name is a version of Antía, a name which I think is Gallego for Antonia. Biblical names like John, Mark, Luke, James, Mary, Leah translate internationally. Some names, however, like my own, are pretty much impossible to find equivalents for in other languages. Maureen, Keith, Beverley, Lesley, Norman - all of these spring to mind. And then there are names like Avelino, Álvaro, Celestino, Pilar, Consuelo.

Lately I have come across some names which sound as though they come from ancient times. Phil has played a chess game against Gumersindo. There was a rider in the Tour de France called Rigoberto. Amazing! Rather like being called Ethelred! I won't even get started on weird modern names, many of which come from Disney films and HBO series!

I started thinking about names because we have just renewed our "tarjeta dorada", the Spanish equivalent of the Senior Railcard, but at a much more reasonable price (€6) and giving a much better 40% discount on fares. We had some difficulty because I didn't immediately remember our Vigo postcode. I am still not sure that the postcode I gave was the correct one. And then there were the names. The poor woman at the ticket office was flummoxed by our only having one surname. She claimed that the computer would not let her continue with the process unless she put two surnames in. She found her own way round it. And so Phil is now Philip Adams Philips on his card and I am Anthea Adams Adams on mine.

Surnames are interesting too. It took me quite some time to realise that the poet Lorca is named after a place in Andalucía, just like the people I know called Halsall or Ramsbottom in the UK. Federico García Lorca is one of the few known universally by his second surname, because García is such a common surname. And Lorca has changed into a forename in the English-speaking world; Leonard Cohen, a great admirer of the Spanish poet, called his daughter Lorca.

Other surnames go back to the time when we were all known as the son/daughter of somebody or other. All the Anglo-Saxon people called, like us, Adams, Michaels, Philips, Johnson or similar were originally in the family of some Adam, Michael or John. In the same way all the Spanish Rodriguez, Davidéz, Martinez, Fernandez and Míguez come from some original Rodrigo, David, Fernando or Miguel. Even all the Perez come originally from Pedro.

But what about one of the chess players in the same tournaments as Phil? His name is Ladrón de Guevara. Now "ladrón" is the Spanish for "thief".