Nomenclature

Out and about here in Hove, it occurs to me that - as it does anywhere - that Dickens was not necessarily outlandish in his choice of names. I have encountered a Calais, a family called Bicker, and in the credits for a Thirties film the other day I saw an Ough (which one might think Enough of this). It also brings to mind the fact that in reviewing crime fiction for the magazine Night and Day, poet and art critic Herbert Read chose the pseudonym James Murgatroyd. When co-editor Graham Greene asked him about this seemingly outlandish creation, Read informed him that it is a common surname in Yorkshire. And I noticed a Murgatroyd in Hove.