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The Telegraph’s top ten names for girls in 2011 were Florence, Isabella, Charlotte, Alice, Isla, Jemima, Daisy, Matilda, Olivia and Emilia. Just two of those names appear in the Office for National Statistics’ top ten list of all baby names registered that year. You will not find many Jemimas or Florences shopping in Brighthouse, visiting a bookmaker’s or claiming housing benefit. Just compare this list of names to those of some who were convicted during the riots that erupted during the summer of 2011: Shonola, Ellese, Aaron, Reece, Kieron and Wayne. The difference between the two is as great as the gulf between Gieves & Hawkes and Primark and, more importantly, it is immediately apparent to anyone hearing those names.
Much of this class divide in names is because of the proliferation of new names appearing in recent decades. The most famous example of these is Kayleigh, which came into existence thanks to the neo-prog rock band Marillion, who had a number two hit with a single of this name in 1985. It was almost unheard of before the song. But since then it has taken hold, especially with parents who grew up with a love of long-haired bouffant power ballads. And it is exclusively a lower-class name, as most newly invented names are. The Jemima class are happy to dredge up an obscure family name, and have no fear of calling their child after an animal (I was at school with both a Beetle and a Frog), but the invention of entirely made-up names is reserved for those lower down the social scale. Some are remarkably imaginative. I know of both a Meta-Angel (her mother ‘met an angel’ early in her pregnancy who told her to keep the child) and a Taome (it stands for ‘the apple of my eye’).
A few years ago Kayleigh made it to the 30th most popular girl’s name in Britain, and it remains popular: 267 children were given it last year. And as I’ve mentioned, the version spelt Kayliegh is one of the five names most heavily skewed towards Acorn Group N, made up of ‘low-income families living on traditional low-rise estates, where unemployment is high’. Kayleigh has spawned a bewildering subset of names, nearly all of which are unrelentingly bizarre. There were 101 Demi-Leighs born last year, seven Chelsea-Leighs, six Tia-Leighs (which could be a liqueur), five Everleighs (a retirement home?), three each of Honey-Leigh and Kaydie-Leigh and even a trio called Lilleigh, which sounds like a sanitary product. In total there were 128 different iterations of ‘Leigh’. These children were born with that name and have no control over what class they have begun life in; but the Hyphen-Leighs represent a group all of their own: children of parents desperate to assert their individuality, regardless of income, housing or education. They do it through a series of public actions, from the naming of their child to their choice of clothes brands. These youngsters were born after Princess Diana stumbled over her wedding vows in St Paul’s Cathedral, but they are as steeped in class as Charles Philip Arthur George. Even the use of a hyphen – a hijacking of what was once the preserve of the upper classes – is a tacit attempt to assert their status, to prove they are not part of the masses. But this has been done on such a scale that those who have done it have become a whole new class.
The Hypen-Leighs are the main supporters of certain fashion chains, and we meet them again in the clothing chapter. As with their appropriation of upper-class punctuation, they are the most agile at spotting high-status brands and making them, or cut-price versions of them, their own, be it Burberry, BlackBerry, Barbour or Ugg. They are as central to this book as the Middleton classes. They both, in their own way, revel in the status they have gained through the choices they have made.
One of the other key class markers when it comes to children’s names is the number of them. It used to be simply that the more you had, the posher you were. It was a way for the Rockabillies who sent their children off to boarding school to help keep Cash’s nametape company in business. I was given two middle names along with my Christian name and was baffled when I met someone at my prep school called just Leo. He had fewer characters in his name than I had initials. The 12th Duke of Manchester, who has spent three years in jail for fraud, called his son, who had the courtesy title Lord Kimbolton, the following jumble of names, all high ranking on the Telegraph list: Alexander Michael Charles David Francis George Edward William Kimble Drogo Montagu. That’s ten pre-names plus the family name Montagu – enough for a cricket team. My father-in-law was embarrassed when he made it to grammar school that he was just ‘John’ and had no middle name – this became apparent when the team sheet for the cricket XI was posted on the school noticeboard. He proceeded to tell the cricket master that his initials were ‘T.G.J.’ – a complete lie, but one that was believed. It was his silent little joke; only he knew that T.G. stood for The Great.
The Hyphen-Leighs have proved that double-barrelling is no longer the preserve of the upper classes, which used the technique as modern companies do with corporate mergers. Families into which they married, and which frequently injected the upper classes with a shot of money or strong genes, were rewarded with being added to the surname. It was briefly thought that Prince William might marry Isabella Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe, but he ended up with Miss Middleton. Who knows? Maybe he thought it might damage the Windsor brand to associate it with a triple barrel.
The method of your birth is another key marker of class, though again it reflects far more on the parents than on the babies, who clearly couldn’t care two hoots if they were born at home with a doula, in a busy NHS hospital or in a thick-carpeted private one. But, boy, does it matter to the small number that avoid the NHS option. A mere 0.5 per cent of the population is born in a private hospital, and it is almost entirely for the status-enhancing comfort that it brings to the parents. The two most famous options are the Portland, a private hospital in London, where all of the Spice Girls, Jemima Khan and the Duchess of York had their respective children, and the Lindo Wing of St Mary’s Paddington, where Princes William and Harry were born. Only a handful of parents announcing the birth of their children in The Times or Telegraph waste precious words (you pay by the word) on detailing the location of the delivery. But a disproportionate number of those giving birth in the Lindo Wing or the Portland like to tell you so. I suppose if you have spent many thousands on a private birth, what’s an extra £20 on telling the world about it? And indeed the Portland offers you a 50 per cent discount on placing a birth announcement in The Times as part of the package, though the choice of name is as much a giveaway as the consultant’s invoice. Hermione, Zander, Honor, Felix, Oscar, Freya, Walter, Amalfi Cordelia and Cosima Celery are just a small selection of the names of the children born in these places.
The statistics support the cliché that the Portland really is the first choice for those too posh to push. Of the 2,232 births that took place there in 2011, 53 per cent were Caesarean sections, more than double the UK average of 24 per cent. Those that come here to give birth are the real elite in Britain. The babies born at the Portland are, of course, at that moment of naked, mewling innocence no different from those born a quarter of a mile down the road at University College Hospital, but they are born into a world absurdly different, and some might say grotesquely privileged. A simple birth costs £5,900, an elective Caesarean costs £8,200 – though you need to add £890 for an epidural. And all of these fees must be added to the consultant’s bill, which starts at £5,000 a baby. But it is not the cost that marks out the Portland Privateers as Britain’s über-elite. It is the added extras that come as part of the package. Along with the discount for announcing the birth in The Times, Sky television, a hair dryer and complimentary toiletries from Molton Brown, there are discounts for certain nanny agencies and an extensive menu for you to enjoy during your stay (£1,750 for each extra night after your first day). I know of a couple, both City lawyers, who chose the Portland over the Lindo Wing purely on the basis of the wine list. I kid you not. Perrier-Jouët, chilled, will set you back £70 a bottle.
The great majority of the Portland Privateers easily fall into the legendary ‘1 per cent’, so despised by politicians as being the venal, blood-sucking, corporate-raiding section of society, earning over £150,000 a year. But they can be surprisingly insecure about their status, with most of them recent arrivals into the Club Class lounge. They have enough money to buy almost any comfort, but they do not feel it. Over-taxed and under-loved, they seek comfort in various brands and labels that offer them the reassurance that their sacrifice of working ludicrous hours and rarely seeing their children is all worth while. Most of them are successful enough professionally – as lawyers, accountants, investment bankers, consultants, fund managers, designers – to have rubbed