Many middle-class parents would (it is said) prefer to hear their little children say fuck than toilet. A similar system of class shibboleths governs the choice of children’s name. The most popular in 2011, it turns out, was Harry. It is unexceptionable, being of ancient royal lineage (‘Cry God for Harry…’), and, like Jack, uniting rich and poor.
What is a tragic burden for the middle classes is to find a rarer name of classy pedigree suddenly become the name shouted in supermarkets at toddlers in tantrums: ‘Jason! Shut that row.’ I can’t find anyone called Jason in all 60 volumes of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, and it must have been most unusual in 1928 when the future Bishop of Derby was born to Jason and Janet Dawes. Even in 1959, when Viscount Norwich’s heir, the Hon Jason Cooper, was born, it was still rare.
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