Family names appearing in stories

My Grandmother told me to "never trust an Eric". No idea why.

When I was thinking of a name for my new daughter, my mother objected to one of my suggestions on the basis that we had known a girl of my age and Mum had a pretty dim view of her as a teenager.

As it happened my daughter isn't named the same as the lady in question.

I don't trust Erics either. To be fair I might change my mind if I ever met one though.

My wife strongly suggested a specific name for one of our sons when he was born. Unfortunately, it was the name of a bloke I went to university with for five years and who was a total dick. My wife said though that you shouldn't let bad people ruin good names, which was an eye opener. I'd have second thoughts regarding for example Hitler, Stalin, Putin or Trump though...

Those are surnames, and in the case of Stalin he chose it himself. Still plenty of Adolfs, Josefs and Donalds about.

I was going to say I would hesitate to use Adolf or Vladimir for my children as, being very unusual in England, they would be immediately connected with those people. Donald I wouldn’t use because it’s not very nice and I would worry more that a child would get called Donald Duck than Donald Trump. Josef/Joseph I am fine with.

Adolf is certainly not as popular in Germany as it once was. In fact the most popular name for new-born boys in Germany is Noah.

Mentioning Adolph reminds me that I recently came across a real life case of a little girl, surname Brown, who had been christened Eva. I hope this was an unfortunate oversight by the parents - it would be more worrying if it was deliberate!

I worked with an Atilla once. He was Hungarian.

I know an Attila too (also Hungarian) and do say ‘the Hun’ in my head every time his name is mentioned.

It’s apparently not that an uncommon a name there.