BBC Learnings · Section 18

The stories behind our names

I'm Neil. And I'm Beth. Names tell us a lot about a person. Many names have meanings. Paul, for example, means humble and the name Anna originated from a Hebrew

Level: B2 · 48 sentences

Transcript

  1. I'm Neil. And I'm Beth. Names tell us a lot about a person.
  2. Many names have meanings. Paul, for example, means humble and the name Anna originated from a Hebrew word meaning graceful.
  3. Our name is an important part of our identity. If you hear someone shout your name in the street, you automatically turn to look.
  4. But names also reveal cultural and family connections, which give us a sense of our history and our place in the world.
  5. In this programme, we'll be meeting a writer whose name combines two very different sides of her identity – one English and the other Indian.
  6. Sheila Banerjee was born in Hayes, West London, to parents from the East Indian state of Bengal.
  7. We'll be hearing about Sheila's research into her name and family history. And as usual, we'll be learning some useful new vocabulary as well.
  8. But first, I have a question for you, Neil. As every parent knows, choosing your child's name isn't easy.
  9. Names go in and out of fashion, and a name that was popular one year soon becomes old-fashioned.
  10. So, what was the most popular name for baby girls in the UK last year?
  11. Was it… Florence, B, Olivia, or C, Amelia?
  12. I'll guess it was Olivia. OK, Neil, we'll find out the answer later in the programme.
  13. Sheila Banerjee's name came out of her parents' journey from British India to West London in the 1950s.
  14. Here, she tells BBC Radio 4 programme Word of Mouth how reflecting on this journey inspired her new book, What's in a Name?
  15. which blends her own life story with history and politics. As soon as I started thinking about it, you know, this name Sheila, which is, you know,
  16. I was a seven-year-old girl living in Hays called Sheila, this very typical English name.
  17. You know, what's that name doing then? If you start to pull at that,
  18. the threads lead you to the story of my Bengali parents' migration over here to mass migration from the colonies after the war to this country.
  19. And then Banerjee contains all these stories about colonialism and caste.
  20. Her parents wanted their daughter to feel safe in London, so they gave her a typical English name, Sheila. If something is typical,
  21. it shows the usual features of a particular type of person or thing.
  22. It's a good example of that type.
  23. She may have had a typical English name, but with dark skin and hair, Sheila didn't look like some people's image of a typical English girl.
  24. Wanting to find out more about her culture, Sheila started to pull the threads behind her family story.
  25. Pulling the threads is an idiom meaning to investigate deeper into something, revealing the hidden connections behind it.
  26. What Sheila discovered was a story of mass migration, periods in history when large groups of people moved from one geographical area to another.
  27. Mass migrations have happened throughout history. In the 1950s and 1960s, many South Asian families, including Sheila's, migrated west to cities in the UK.
  28. But this is just one half of the story.
  29. Sheila's family name, Banerjee, reflects her roots in the Bengali culture of East India, where surnames tell a lot about a person's social status or caste.
  30. Here's Sheila explaining more to BBC Radio 4 programme, Word of Mouth.
  31. It is an Indian name, but actually it's not my real name.
  32. You've got names like Banerjee, Mukerjee, Chatterjee, which, you know, nowadays people hear over here. But Banerjee is an anglicised form of my original name, which would have been Bondobantar.
  33. And it's a name that was changed by the British when they went over there because they really basically couldn't be bothered to pronounce it or couldn't pronounce it.
  34. And for me, it's always been a very mixed name because it signifies that we were you know, colonial subjects. And so it's a tricky name to be carrying around.
  35. Sheila's surname is actually pronounced Bondobadta. But during colonial times, the name became anglicised.
  36. It was changed to sound more English. This happened a lot.
  37. The surnames Chattobadta became Chatterjee and Mukobadta became Mukerjee, either because the British rulers couldn't pronounce them or because they couldn't be bothered.
  38. They didn't make the effort.
  39. Sheila feels her anglicised surname has always been tricky, difficult to use, because of the association with colonialism and oppression.
  40. Ironically, it was London, the capital of the British Empire, that in modern times became the destination for migrants from all over the world.
  41. OK, it's time to reveal the answer to your question, Beth.
  42. What was the most popular girl's name in 2022? I guessed it was Olivia. which was the correct answer.
  43. In 2022, Olivia remained the most popular girl's name for the sixth year in a row and was given to 3,649 baby girls.
  44. OK, let's recap the vocabulary from this programme, starting with typical, containing the most usual features of a particular type of person or thing.
  45. If you pull the threads of something, you investigate it more deeply to find the hidden stories behind it.
  46. Mass migration is the historical movement of large groups of people from one place to another. If something is anglicised, it's changed to sound or appear English.
  47. If you can't be bothered to do something, you don't make the effort to do it. And finally, if something is tricky, it's difficult to manage and requires careful use.
  48. Once again, our six minutes are up. Goodbye for now. Bye.