Education, inspiration and pure entertainment – it’s all in a name

The names we bestow upon inanimate objects tell us so much – generally about ourselves – our identity, personality, sense of humour (or lack of it). Onomastics or onomatology, the study of names, absorbs some people for years. Looking at narrowboat names I can understand why – they offer up a entire world of education, history, reality and imagination.

Some boats tell of their owners’ situation like the humorous Old Age Traveller, or geographic origins Ay up mi Duck which anyone from Nottingham will recognise, Tui and Rangitikei from New Zealand, and Francophiles might identify our own narrowboat’s name Preaux. Named after the French village where we lived and where our daughters were born, the word also aptly means a playground.

There’s a hidden education available on offer in linguistics too. If you didn’t learn Latin at school – take to the cut with a curious mind and you’ll soon learn…

There are at least 76 boats out there called Carpe Diem (Seize the Day), probably one for every marina in England. Strangely there’s only one river cruiser licensed as Carpe Vinum (Seize the Wine). Personally I wish we’d thought of Carpe Iuniperorum (Seize the Juniper…i.e. the gin!) There are a good few Tempus Fugit (time flies) but only one Tempus Vernum (Spring time). I wonder if the owner of this was an Enya, Verdi or nature fan or perhaps all three?

The most common names are those reflecting some of the highlights of this beautiful floating environment. Kingfisher and Dragonfly appear in their hundreds according to licence lists. Flora and fauna also provide inspiration for more original names like the rain lily Zephyranthes. Pretty apt as living on a narrowboat you’re well aware of any precipitation!

There are boats whose names reflect what inspires or fires the passions of their owners. Victo Gould was inspired to name Zero after reading of a philosopher who declared zero to be “the immovable mover of things… puts everything into balance, much like a boat which is floating level.” I only hope the philosopher wasn’t Schopenhauer. Canals weren’t much good for him. He drowned in one in Hamburg in 1805.

Dragon’s Dream was inspired by poster from the owner’s youth and his passion for these fire breathing flying creatures. The eyes at the front of the boat are inspired in the Norse tradition to both offer protection and enable the vessel to find its way safely.

Floating along our inland waterways are some sensationally unusual names that take you off into fascinating discoveries as well as far fetched musings about how they came by their monikers. There are advantages to social distancing and lockdown at times – it allows your imagination to go wild and not be stifled by reality or truth. Sometimes you don’t want to know the real reason behind the name – imagining how a boat could have got its name can take you into flights of fancy….One day I hope I will be able to catch up with some of these boats at a time I can knock on the side and ask about the real reasons behind their names, but sometimes you’re just passing by and have to rely on your imagination… which has the advantage of at least preventing the disappointingly unimaginative response of: “No idea, it had that name when we bought it.”.

The Flying Eagle for example may be owned by enthusiastic numismatists who longed to own one of the rare American coins but never did. Instead they gave its name to their beloved boat…alternatively they could have owned one of the rare coins and funded the boat by its sale…or the owner could have been a trapeze artist … Just one name and the possibilities are endless!

Khaleesi – I’m sure will be owned by a strong woman…. or by someone who earned the money to buy the boat from involvement in the Games of Thrones dramatisation of George R.R. Martin’s book A Song of Ice and Fire… Khaleesi was after all Martin’s title for the wife of a Dothraki warlord.

Montgomery Pickles Esq has had his story written up already – and a remarkable one it is, one that just can’t be embellished! There does remain a question of whether the boat was indeed really named after a… goldfish?

Some names make you wonder what was the spur that led their owners to take to narrowboats or are perhaps evidence of wishful thinking, Rehab, Patience, Wegonen-Dunnit, Who gives a… and Peace at last for example. The latter has ended up with the owner of at least one of the 5 on the water being nicknamed Tombstone – something he apparently wasn’t expecting!

As you can see we positively sped past Lady Mondegreen (my excuse for poor photography). She gave her name to misheard lyrics and appeared with the Earl of Moray in situ.

Sylvia Wright coined the term mondegreen for a misheard lyric after mishearing the lyrics of one of Bishop Thomas Percy’s Reliques as:

Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands,
Oh, where hae ye been?
They hae slain the Earl o’ Moray
And Lady Mondegreen. (Percy wrote: “and lay’d him on the green”)

My own mondegreen has led my daughters to burst out laughing in clubs and parties whenever Kings of Leon play:

Lay where you’re laying
Don’t make a sound
I know they’re watching
They’re watching

All the commotion
The kiddie-like play
Has people talking
They’re talking

You
Your socks is on fire

Flaming socks always struck me as such a delightfully odd thing to sing about. None of us can now unhear this and I had it as my mobile ringtone for years.

Talking of songs, would you believe at last count there were 6 Waterloo Sunset‘s floating on this ‘dirty old river’…or canals… and television and musicals inspire too. When I can approach boats and shout without fear of breaching social distancing rules, I want to know how and why Craggy Island and Alfie got their names. Connections with performances, episodes, or just a love for the stories they tell?

Sometimes the name you see hides a charming or amusing story when you do get the chance to meet and talk to the owners. Maythorne is a 60ft narrowboat owned by a couple who had a lifetime in horticulture. Appropriately their boat is named after the English hedgerow staple also known as hawthorn which turns the countryside into a swathe of white in May. It was the topic for the first article the owner wrote when approached to share his knowledge more widely.

Molly ‘D’ who I hope you have the chance to encounter at floating markets is the home of spinner and weaver Christine and her Yorkshire husband. If you see them make a point of visiting their boat to see her work which clients across the globe seek out. When they were trying to decide on a name for their boat they went back and forth between them watched by their dog Molly. In despair, unable to choose a name they said they might as well leave it to the dog, and so the boat is… Molly ‘D’. Molly Dog is sadly no longer but her name lives on afloat.

Some boats have fuelled my fascination to the point where I’ve spent money and enjoyed hours of research in a quest to know more.

Passing Mabel Stark on a mooring resulted in me discovering the remarkable Mary Ann Haynie in 1920s America. Under the name of Mabel Stark she became the most renowned tiger trainer in the States with Barnum and Bailey’s circus among others – and here she still is, remembered with her name emblazoned on an English narrowboat! I’d love to see the decor on board – tiger prints throughout perhaps? I do want to hear how the owners came by the name – were they tiger trainers themselves? Is the owner perhaps the Canadian author Robert Hough, or a relative of his? Or maybe even a relative of Mabel’s? One day I hope to meet Mabel Stark cruising the cut and not on a mooring so I can ask the questions I long to have answered. In the meantime the novel based on Mabel’s remarkable career and racy life raised eyebrows for a winter evening or two. It’s now moved into the boaters’ book exchange at Willington in South Derbyshire for other boaters. It’s no spoiler to say her life was probably even more exciting than the book about it!

Another boat name has resulted in me wanting to order two books about the life of another exceptional woman – Ursula Graham Bowers. This former debutante broke away from the strictures of English society’s expectations for young ladies and in 1939 headed to the mountainous Naga region between India and Burma. Her resulting anthropological observations of the Naga groups of the region were recognised for their detail and insight, despite the fact she had no formal training in anthropology. In World War II at the request of the British administration she led a guerilla force of 150 armed Naga against the Japanese troops. Her exploits earned her the nicknames Naga Queen and Jungle Queen. Might this boat be or have been owned by one of her relatives, or by one of the authors or writers who documented her life? I was delighted in whilst researching the Naga Queen to find video which allowed me to hear the indomitable lady’s voice in person in a beautifully conducted received pronounciation interview from 1985. It seems strangely dated by today’s standards, very staged with no interruptions, no aggressive questions and a gentle appreciation for the subject.

I’m now eagerly awaiting a chance to read Ursula Graham Bowers’ biography as well as getting out of lockdown to start cruising again. What onomatological gems lie out there to discover?