The Name Game

What do we call each other?

In Tim Rice’s fun if at times irreverent Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, there’s a song about his father’s names - he was Jacob but also Israel, a bit of complex Old Testament theology going on there. “But most of the time, His sons and his wives used to call him Dad!”

When I first had grandchildren on the horizon (that would be around twenty-two years ago) the “what to call the grandparents” question had to be addressed. It’s a more complex question in the States (where I was then) than in most places as the melting-pot, so-called, melts pretty slow. I read somewhere that Americans have maybe two hundred options. Anyway, I cut the discussion short by adding a two hundred and first. “They can call me Nigel.” And they do. At least, that lot do. Daughter number two soon protested: “I don’t get to call you Nigel, so sure as heck my kids won’t get to.” And so it goes. Four sets of grandkids, four different names.

This all becomes rather relevant when you get into the biography business, and start noticing these details. Yesterday afternoon I was reading Bruce Gilley’s new book The Last Imperialist (Regnery Gateway), a biography, of sorts, of Sir Alan Burns, one of the top civil servants in the final days of the vast British Empire. It interested me partly as a defense of empire, by a noted conservative writer; I like nothing better than challenges to lazy current consensus thinking, whether from left or right. But it has other interests. My late father (never called him Dad; Daddy when we were little, then the self-conscious Pater from time to time in our self-conscious teens; he would sign himself “your affec. father” - and no, this was not in the nineteenth century) - OK, “Dad” was a very junior civil servant in that same Colonial Office in London during the 1950s where Burns had lately been a top dog, busy running fifty-some countries that now all have their own votes in the UN.

And there’s more. Burns had been governor of the colony of British Honduras in central America (now Belize, one of the last to go), where it so happens my late mother (Mummy/Mater) was born and lived for her first few weeks back in 1921. Brits used to dot around the empire back in those days, just like they did across Europe until you-know-what. (To ramble even further - O the delight of operating sans editor - we lately discovered that Mater’s Belizean birth means my sisters and I are actually Belizean citizens, and through a Byzantine-Belizean process can apply for passports, if that catches our fancy and we have the time.)

But to point. After the opening chapter, Gilley (or should I call him Bruce?) insists on referring to his subject by his given name (back then it was undoubtedly a Christian name), Alan, all the time. It’s hard to put into bloggable words how much this grates upon the reader, or at least this reader, page after page. Not simply as if Bruce and Alan were buddies, but - how do I say this? - as if Bruce has absolutely no clue as to how men’s names were used by people of Alan’s (ouch) generation and class. I mean, I was born more than a half-century later, but in my boys’ school you just called everyone by their last name. Looking back, I think the occasional exception would be the boy whose family you had visited, where the veil was drawn back from the baptismal name to please Mater. I had a lot of pals in high school (Bradford Grammar School in Yorkshire), but I can recall only a handful with whom I was on actual first-name terms (that phrase does sound old). My memory on this point is underlined by the fact that I recall once slipping up. I was with two boys who were very friendly with each other, and I made the unpardonable mistake of stepping over the boundary. One was a rather superior fellow, always leader of the pack, head boy, exceptionally gifted; I liked him, and we had got on well over the years. It just slipped out. I called him Richard. He turned on me, quite angered. (He was a thespian, and a good one, on stage and off.) “Cameron, my name is Richard, but you may call me Styche.” Sadly, Styche passed away many years back. Lest you’re worried, while I do well recall the event, I didn’t feel in the least mortified. I was as much the arrogant teen as he was; I just thought “O here is Styche being superior again,” and we went on with our walk. (His buddy, also super-smart but a much nicer fellow, whom I have not seen for half a century, was David Normanton, who went on to become one of Britain’s top civil servants. In post-colonial days.)

I think this is a major faux pas in the biography, and while I’m at it “Bruce’s” somewhat meandering chapters also make for a bit of a challenge; and the index - exceptionally important in a biography - is a poor creature (I looked for Education, and there are no E words at all). But it’s an unusual book, and I’m enjoying it. Especially the Belize stuff. Well, I would. I’m a citizen.

It isn’t that a biographer needs to have known his or her subject in person, or indeed their world, but the depiction of their subject’s world must carry the ring of truth to those who did know the subject or who have more closely inhabited that world. Which reminds me of another, related, recent annoyance, in an otherwise terrific depiction of Churchill’s war, by an American. It repeatedly insists on referring to the British seat of government at 10 Downing Street as “10 Downing.” I can say with confidence that not a single actual Brit in recorded history, not a one, has ever done that. (The correct short form is “Number 10.”) It would be like calling The White House “The White.” “10 Downing” sounds ridiculous, and - to be serious - raised with me questions about the wider judgment and cutural competence of the writer - and the publisher. Was this MS about Britain ever once reviewed by a native? Seriously? (Erik Larsen, The Splendid and the Vile, Crown).

And so to Dr. Koop. I doubt the biography will bear an excursus on his names, though there will be comments here and there. One of my earlier memories of him after we first met in the 80s was a little personal seminar on how people use names in Washington. Brits think, he told me, that everyone in the U.S. is on first-name terms, but that is far from so. I don’t recall all the rules (he loved to play the professor) but basically you can use first names on your own level and below, but woe betide if you try it above you in the hierarchy without being invited. Of course, I’ve long since discovered - having spent much of two decades working in Washington myself - what an extraordinarily formal place it can be, as you tumble over piles of Directors and Ambassadors and Honorables and realize that the Republic that abolished aristocratic titles has replaced them with scads of allegedly meritocratic ones, that people hang onto for life! Which seems quite as weird as the schoolmasters we had in 60s England still using their military handles every single day two decades after they last fired a shot.

Despite “Bruce’s” example, I think I’ll stick with Koop as the default name in the biography, with elaborations of course from time to time as needed. As Surgeon General, Koop immediately became a Rear Admiral. (Yes, that sounds weird. It is weird. Long short story. You’ll need to buy the book if you want all the details.) So some of his correspondents addressed him Dear Admiral, some Dear Surgeon General, and occasionally Dear General (this really is confusing, though the Attorney General, another political appointee with a title fashioned by history, is also sometimes addressed as General or referred to as the General, so it should maybe not be ruled out altogether).

Then of course there were his personal names. He was “C. Everett,” the C being for Charles, but in college and forever after he became “Chick” (chicken coop, get it?) to his friends. Chick was pretty free with his nickname. The first time we met, in October of 86, he told me I could call him Chick. I felt quite the burst of privilege (opposite here of the Styche situation). Then he turned to my colleague who had been setting up his travel. “So can you, Ruth!” And we all got on famously. He told me later that he had hoped to get rid of Chick when he shifted from college to med school, but as he was lining up for some fresher activity in his first week an old friend recognized him from across the room yelling “hey, Chick Koop!” and it was all over. One thing I’m glad of is that in print he’s rarely referred to as C. Everett “Chick” Koop, an annoying American habit that I find, well, annoying.

Whatever happened to Everett? It’s amusing just once in a while to come across someone who addresses him by this second given name, affecting an intimacy that at the same time they give away that they lack. I’m sure he was amused. He did say one time that the only people who actually knew him as Everett were members of his family (as in his anterior family, parents, uncles, aunts, and before).

A telling tell: both the Clintons wrote letters of sympathy after his passing in 2013 - they’re reproduced in the brochure for his National Memorial Service. Hillary, with whom he was genuinely friendly (she co-hosted his 90th birthday party; I was there) writes of her sadness at Chick’s passing.

Bill writes of Everett.