WHAT'S IN TWO NAMES?

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 67, 20 March 1937, Page 10 (Supplement)

WHAT'S IN TWO NAMES?

Behold A Feu) Changelings!

MOTIVES AESTHETIC AND OTHERWISE.

NOW it happened one night that , young lMkran Konyounuljan, having nothing better to do (and no man was ever horn who could discover a Letter tiling to do than this), called upon Jessica Dermot at her villa in Cannes. To him and to that lovely lady there entered soon Mr. Bamberger; and it is told that all three, after talking a little while of this and that, rose up and went to the uncommonly splendid yacht in the harbour which is owned, as all Cannes knows (and what Cannes knows the world knows), by Mr. Schonberg. . . . It sounds like the beginning of a Michael Alien story. It is the beginning of a Michael Arlen story. For of Michael Arlen it may lie said, as he wrote of his own heroine Shelmerdine. that Michael Arlen is not his real name, hut becomes him better than any real name could. Especially better than the real name his mother gave him. which was Dikran Kouyoumdjan.

As for Jessica Dermot, that is the real name of Miss Maxine Elliott. And Mr. Bamberger is the name by which Mr. Burton was once called. Aid Mr. Schonberg wa-s a name which its owner has changed to Commodore Beaumont, a change at once euphonious and reasonable, since Beaumont is a literal translation of Schoubcrg. Was it coincidence that these four leaders of social life in Cannes had all decided to clothe their identities in a bright new name* Or i<» name-changing more common than most people believed The answer is that it is very common indeed; which brings me to the threshold of my theme. A Consoling Remnant. More interesting in many cases even than the change of name is the reason for the change. Sometimes it is com mercial. sometimes aesthetic, sometime-; political. To the first category belong the translation of Jessica Dermot to Maxine Elliott, of Marie Etlu-rington to Marie Tempest, of Gracie Stanstield to (irai-ie Fields, of Lucille Le Seur to .loan Crawford, of Greta fiustaffson to Greta (iarbo and of Dikran Kouyoumdjan to Michael Arlen. The actor and the author must have names easily remembered by the public. For the author of Action the concoction of a new name is easier by far than for the actor, since the author is well accustomed to devising names for whole bookfills of characters. All that Mr. Dikran Kouyoumdjiiii ili-1 I was to examine some of his own early short stories, anil he found that in one

of them he had christened the hero I Michael Alien. Long before lie could say "Dikran Kouyoumdjan" the young man in the short story had his name snatched from him. and his creator lias worn it ever since. In the worlds of stage and screen marriages between eminent name-changers arc, of course, frequent; for example, by the time that Mr. Douglas Fairbanks, ne Lilman, married Miss <;ladys Smith she had become Mary Pickford." Outside those worlds the phenomenon is rarer. But it has been left to politics to provide a case of a man, having given his i wife his name at marriage, later revertj ing to the use of her maiden name for ' both of them. ' Sir Philip Lloyd-Creanie married Miss , CunlifTc-Lister. After their marriage Lidy Lloyd-Creame's mother died within ] a few months of inheriting the greater part of a fortune of f 1,500.000. Even though death duties had taken their toll 1 twice within so short a space, there was quite enough left to compensate Sir ; I'hilip and his wife for the confusion caused by their changing their name to Cunliffe-Lister—a condition of inheritance imposed by Lady Lloyd-Greame's mother in her will. There wa* some expectation at the time that they might become Lloyd-(ireame-Cunliffe-Lister, but Sir Philip took a statesmanlike decision and became, and remained, Cunliffe-Lister until the over-riding wishes of a grateful nation interposed and. accepting a peerage, he changed again to Swinton. The Hyphenated Trailer. , It is. of course, a favourite device in j England, either at marriage or at whim j or for purposes of inheritance, to attach | one's surname like a trailer to somei body else's by means of a hyphen. For example, Commander Mons'ell married Miss Eyres and became Eyres-Monsell; now he is Lord Monsell. " And inheritance caused Arthur Wilson, eon of Captain Arthur Wilson and brother of Mr. Robin Wilson, to become Arthur Wilson-Filmer. Mr. W. Clarke Deeley, of Curzon Park. Chester, married M'ss Mallaby. One of the two son* of the marriage became Sir Harry Mallaby-Deeley. The other became Mr. Frank Curzon, who won the Derby with Call Boy. In this article I am mainly concerned i not with mere hypJienator's like the Eyres-Monsells and the Mallaby-Dee leys, but with wholehearted name- . changers; with the people who. having once adopted a new name for any rea- . son whatever, adopt it lock, stock and . barrel, signing cheques with it. Wing ( announced (in the good old days) at r Londonderry House by it. taking it to * lied with them, ami even, in the end, ' having it carved on their tombstones. j Tam concerned with people like (hat owner of the surname Duck who changed him name to (irahame. And, by the way. he showed uncanny prescil ence in doing so. For one of Duck's i descendants. Sir George Crahamc. | became our Ambassador at Brussels, and sI in tlie year 192."> his first secretary was i Mr. K. Millington-Drake. ami his second -secretary Mr. K. O. Coote. so that but e | for the decisive action of Sir (ieorjre's e. ' forbear Hi* Britannic Majesty's (Jovernc , ment would have been represented in - ; Brussels bv a duck, a drake and a coot. ol " ,] | Politico-Patriotic. | Changes of name for political, or e ; politico-patriotic, reasons were frequent '■ during the war. National sentiment n very naturally recoiled from even nomr inal links with the enemy, and the King's example, whereby the House of .- Saxe-Coburg became the House of Windsor, was followed by many, d The House of Teck became the House v of Cambridge. The House of llatteii e I burg became Mountbatteii.

Business men who, though born in England, happened to have names suggestive of foreign origin, also changed them in large numbers at this time. For example, the lirm of S. Jnstone and Company, of which Sir Samuel Imstone —born at Gravesend —is the head, was S. Einstein and Company up to 1914. Politico-patriotic enangea have been, and still are, frequent in Soviet Russia. "Izvestia" record* them day by day on a corner of its back page. I noticed recently that several Trotskys have made a change. One has become a Vinogradoff. Another, determined that a thing worth doing is worth doing well, has turned into Egoroff, after Marshal Egoroff, who in very popular just now, and may it last. "Izvestia" has also just announced the decision, rather tardy to ray mind, of a Mr. Rasputin to be known in future a 6 Orloff. A Big Turnover. In England the desire of a large number of people owning Jewish names to J disown them is one of the principal factors accounting for the perennial briskness of the name-changing market. Already this year there has been a pretty'big turnover of Cohens. Among the new names they have chosen, according to records in the Enrolment Oflice at the Law (/urts, are: — Kaye, Hodgson. Maxwell. Co wen. Collins, Castle, Storn, Hcnston. Colne, Williams, Curtis, Cowan. Coates. Cordon. Isaaeses have preferred, in KWti. to become Andrew, Essex, Irvine and Iredale. Sometimes the transaction is a gentle one, as in Rabinovitch to Robinson; sometimes it is rich and strange, like Zeischang into Alexander. I told you this was an interesting subject, did T not? I recommend its occasional study to you as an alternative to going to the pictures to watch Dorothy Catley and Harlene Carpenter and Charles Pratt I beg their pardon— Ann Harding and .lean Harlow and Boris Karloff. And I sign mvself -Willv Xillv.