I was mildly offended to read in the Economist’s Christmas issue a feature headlined “We need to talk about Europe’s Kevins”, which carried this subheading: “How an American name became a European diagnosis”.
The subject was the dramatic rise a generation ago in the global popularity of calling baby boys Kevin, and the subsequent, equally dramatic decline in the name’s prestige.
This was indeed a source of some distress to a former writer of the Irishman’s Diary, Kevin Myers, who lamented it more than once in this space and whose pain may be aggravated now by the suggestion that his name is not even Irish anymore.
The Economist’s Charlemagne column credited the surge in its international popularity to the 1990 Christmas movie Home Alone, in which Macaulay Culkin played an eight-year-old so christened.
Name Shame – Frank McNally on the continuing tragedy of the forename “Kevin” and a bad night for “Shamrock” in London
Kiss of Death? – Frank McNally on the rise and fall of mistletoe
O Holy Fright – Frank McNally on an ‘uplifting’ carol service
Keeping it lit – Frank McNally on attending the global premiere of Gloomsday
Before that film, says Charlemagne, the most popular names for baby boys in western Europe were local variants of ancestral ones: “Julien in France, Jan in Germany, Johannes in the Netherlands”. By 1991, Kevin had become supreme in all three countries.
Since then, however, the name has undergone a precipitous decline in social standing, according to the magazine:
“Whatever the reason, in England ‘Kev’ has become a synonym for working-class wastrel, a denigration as severe as being a Karen in America. Germans speak of Kevinismus, or the plight of prejudice felt by those bearing the name; a Kevinometer app helps parents avoid giving their kid a name that sounds great today but will come to be seen as a marker of poor parental taste come 2040 ...”
And so on. Such is its reputation in Germany now, the Economist sums up, quoting a local wit, that Kevin is no longer a name there: “it’s a diagnosis.”
In the context of such a reputational catastrophe, it is perhaps a minor libel to claim that the name is now also “American”. And yes, the magazine does attempt to cover itself by inserting the aside (“Kevin is of Irish origin but is more common across the Atlantic”), complete with brackets, mid-column, as justification for the subhead.
But of course there are more Kevins in America – there is more of just about everything there. By the same logic, the Economist might as well claim that the name Dublin is now American. There is only one of those in Ireland, after all. But there at least 16 Dublins in the US, scattered all over the place, like snuff at a wake.
While we’re still on the subject of cultural imperialism, I might as well also complain about the tendency of British newspapers, when reporting this week’s Europa Conference match between Chelsea and Shamrock Rovers, to call the latter “Shamrock” for short, rather than the conventional abbreviation, which is “Rovers”.
This would never happen with a British team. Nottingham Forest, for example – currently fourth in the English Premiership – are always shortened to “Forest” in match reports, not to “Nottingham”. Similarly, one never hears mention of a team called “Aston” or “Crystal”, only “Villa” and “Palace”.
There are three “United” clubs playing in the current Premiership, a recipe for confusion.
But these are still invariably abbreviated as such, except when playing each other. In that case reporters will go to great lengths of euphemism – “the side in red”, “the home side”, “the visitors”, etc – to avoid committing such a faux pas as referring to a team as “Manchester”.
Even so, the London Times – for example – reporting Thursday night’s game from Stamford Bridge, repeatedly flouted the convention of abbreviating the away team to its surname (as it were). Instead, it referred repeatedly to “the Shamrock defence”, or to “Shamrock’s naivete”.
At one point, the paper even claimed that this was “Shamrock on their first visit to England”. (On the contrary, as someone who has covered the Cheltenham racing festival many times, I can confirm the stuff is all over the place there in mid-March – even the royal family wear it).
There was general agreement in the British papers that the “Shamrock defence” was out of its depth in a game won by 5-1 by Chelsea. Reporters stopped short only – as far as I could see – of claiming any Shamrock had been drowned.
Yes, I suppose, calling a football team “Rovers” seems quaint these days – it makes them sound like labradors. And yet it remains the convention that English teams retaining the subtitle – including Blackburn, Bristol, and Tranmere – are invariably still so known for short.
I’ve complained here before about the looseness of language in English football reports, and especially the notorious double standard whereby a striker may “tuck the ball home” or do the exact opposite thing and tuck it “away”, even though the ball ends up in exactly the same place both times.
But abbreviating Blackburn or Bristol Rovers to “Rovers” is an iron rule in England, and to flout it for a visiting Irish team seems disrespectful. Would those of us who grew up with British boys’ comics ever refer to certain footballing hero as “Roy of the Melchester”? No, readers of a certain age, we would not.