What's in a name?

Will was, as so often, quite right. A rose by any name would pong the same. But somehow one wouldn't expect a flower called cowsfart to have a pleasant scent so, if the rose was called that, would it still smell the same? Perhaps it's a bit like me not wanting to eat orange peas because they wouldn't taste right. I don't actually know what orange peas would taste like as I've never had the opportunity to find out, but somehow I can't imagine them tasting like peas.

The same goes for towns. My local professional football club, Brighton & Hove Albion, played a team from Hull on Saturday. Actually, the club is Hull City Association Football Club. There is also a Rugby League (as distinct from Rugby Union) club known as Hull Kingston Rovers. But that's beside the point. (I do very easily become sidetracked.)

I have never been to Hull. I did meet somebody from that city - he taught me Rugby Union - and he said its name was really Kingston upon Hull but everybody knew it as just plain Hull. As I said, I have never been there. All I know about the city is that it is on the River Humber and is in the East Riding of Yorkshire. Or rather, it was in the East Riding of Yorkshire. The city has not mysteriously upped sticks and moved, but the county boundaries have been redrawn and Hull is now (I think) in Humberside. (I'm getting sidetracked again.)

My point is that because the name "Hull" is, to my ear, unattractive I assume that the city is as well. I don't know what it is like, but I don't have a mental picture of a city that I would be happy to wander around. I find it impossible to say what I would imagine it to be like if I knew only the full name - Kingston upon Hull - because the shortened version is so ingrained in my mind.

On the other hand, a village with the name Barton Constable (I don't know if there is one: I just made the name up) would be pictured as having thatched cottages around the village green.

The same goes for the names of people. If you were at school with an unlikeable person, anyone else with the same name must also be unlikeable. On the other hand, you can be terribly disappointed when you eventually meet another person bearing the same name as a boy or girl on whom you had a crush years ago. (I still like the name Jennifer but whereas I used to like Dawn I have since been put off the name.)

Maybe a rose by any other name would smell as sweet but sometimes the heart says that what the head tells us doesn't seem quite right.