What's in a (young) Name

For Times of TW

The Continuity of the Young

By Kent Barker

There’s a pleasing sense of continuity in village communities like mine. I was walking back home the other day—having driven my tractor up to the orchard in order to mow an area in preparation for our annual apple day—though that’s really another story.

So there Myrtle and I are, taking the short cut across the fields and through the woods before squeezing through the adjacent hedge into our meadow behind the house. Normally the only creatures we encounter are pheasants, the odd rabbit or fox and squirrels leaping from tree to tree. But occasionally we spy—or are spied by—a gamekeeper or one of the family of farmers who own the land.

The legality of our route is slightly questionable. It is private land with no public footpaths nearby. We have permission to walk in the woodland, but I think it was assumed that we’d approach it from the house, not the orchard.  However, the only other route home is down a busy road with no footpath and plenty of blind bends. So, from time to time, we walk across—or rather around the edge—of the field. Usually, a tractor driver, ploughing, spraying or harvesting, will ignore our incursion and get on with his work. But, on this occasion, we came face to face with one of the owners of the farm, transporting apple bins.

As is my wont, I gave him a cheery wave and was about to continue when he stopped his tractor and called over to us. I nodded at the bins and asked him about his apple harvest and about the new trees planted a couple of years back and dropped in a few comments about ‘my’ orchard in the hope he’d be sympathetically inclined towards a fellow grower.

It didn’t take long to get round to where I was heading and I mentioned the name of my house. “Oh,” he said, “you’re Young Barker.” And then, with an almost imperceptible pause: “Not so young any more, though, I see.”

Looking at his grizzled face, and grey locks, I made some rejoinder about how none of us was so young any more!

But it was that phrase “Young” Barker that got me thinking. Apart from anything else, when you get to my age, any suggestion of youthfulness is deeply appreciated. (Someone only a couple of years my senior referred to me as ‘lad’ recently. I was really chuffed.)

On the question of nomenclature, the choice of how to distinguish between the generations is an interesting one.  Our transatlantic cousins tend to do it with ‘junior’—a system I’ve never much liked. To be known as Barker ‘Jnr’ would seem somehow diminutive and redolent of private schooling. Or they use numerical suffixes. And while ‘Barker II’ might have a pleasingly regal ring it hardly distinguishes you as an individual.

So round here we’ve tended to use ‘Young’. Now, in my grandfather’s time, there was a gentleman named Turk who ran a lorry company up the road. His son was, therefore, known as Young Turk (rather a complimentary term I’d have thought but, apparently, it technically refers to the revolutionaries who deposed the Ottoman Empire’s Sultan Abdul Hamid II in 1908—though I’m fairly sure our Turk had nothing to do with such radical activities.)

Anyway, by my father’s time, ‘Young’ Turk was no longer so young, had taken over the transport firm, and had a son of his own. But, instead of slipping the appellation down one generation, the latest member of the family was henceforth referred to as Young Young Turk. Which I suppose had some logic.  And it wasn’t until ‘Old’ Turk died that anyone thought of promoting the other two. Though this led, inevitably, to some confusion. “I see Turk’s bought a new, lorry,” my mother might remark. “Which Turk?” my father would query. “Young Turk?” she’d say. “Yes, but is that Young Turk or Young Young Turk?” father would ask.

So, it was with some amusement that I discovered I was known as ‘Young Barker’ and wondered what the farmer might call my son, who also occasionally walks the dog across his land.

The farming family is, incidentally, called Cyster. Written down, this is reasonably clear, but in conversation sounds exactly like ‘sister’.  Since the farm is run by a pair of brothers this also has scope for copious confusion.  As in: “the older Cyster brother’s son is known as the young Cyster, as is his male cousin, while their aunt, is the Cyster’s sister.” It reminds me of that old riddle: brothers and sisters have I none but that man’s father is my father’s son.  Who am I?

I wonder if it might be easier all round to stick to given names?

ends.