Names can have unintended associations. The story goes that some years ago when a new Nissan car model was planned, a high executive decided that it should have aristocratic associations. He enquired what were typical names for aristocrats in the English-speaking world, and was told “Cuthbert”, “Cecil”, “Cedric”, and so on. He therefore imagined that these names connoted the qualities of a warrior lord, like the Japanese daimyo –strength, nobility, admirability and the rest. He failed to realise that in the English-speaking world aristocrats had long ceased to be regarded as typifying such qualities, and had come to be regarded as typically effete, pretentious, waste-of-space parasites – with these being the qualities suggested by such names. In his innocent ignorance he called the model the “Nissan Cedric”. Goodness knows how many tens or hundreds of thousands of potential sales the company lost in consequence of the limp-wristed associations the model thus acquired.

 

When the present Pope decided to give himself the pontifical name Francis, as suggesting St Francis of Assissi, I was uneasy because when I was young a much stronger association of the name, when applied to boys, was with the equine character in the popular 1950s comedy movie series, “Francis the Talking Mule”. Boys who called themselves Francis would be irreverently addressed as “Fra-a-a-ncis&rdrdquo;, in whinnying tones. They could, however, easily escape the association simply by calling themselves “Frank”. Unfortunately, popes don’t have that name-varying and thus association-varying option.