Wouldn't it be great if you could change somebody else's name by deed poll?
Then someone you disliked would wake up one day and find they had to conduct all their business, at work or in the bank or in contact with officialdom, as Fartyface Twatpants, or Portly Prelate O'Punctum, or something
A run-in with a jobsworth, Simon?
ReplyDeleteJohn Wayne's name was changed by the studio without his permission. They thought (rather sensibly, I guess) that his real name of Marion Morrison was not the aptest for such a rugged persona, and held a meeting to discuss changing his name, but didn't invite Marion himself to the meeting. "Anthony Wayne" was their original suggestion, but they considered Anthony too Catholic a name, and so went with the more ecumenical John.
No just a whimsical thought!
ReplyDeleteThat's amazing about John Wayne not being even consulted.
Anthony as too Catholic? How bizarre. Never struck me as a Catholic name particularly.
It does have three syllables whereas John is punchy and short.
Well, the objection to Anthony was as much that they associated it with Italians, but an anti-Italian sentiment would by its nature incorporate an anti-Catholic sentiment.
ReplyDeleteWhen the Ku-Klux Klan became resurrected in the wake of Birth of a Nation, anti-Catholicism was one of the many new prejudices they adopted alongside their traditional anti-black prejudice. JFK's opponents oft cited his Catholicism as a negative, with them implying that the real power behind his administration would come from the Vatican. Nowadays, 7 (!) justices on the Supreme Court are Catholic, as is the President. Maybe we have at long last reached a time where a western actor can have his name changed to Anthony without his consent.
Ah, this is something I know a bit about - I specialized in American History at college.
ReplyDeleteThe anti-Catholic thing goes back at least as far as the Nativist Party in the 1850s. Also known as the Know Nothings. They were alarmed by the waves of immigrants from Ireland (and later on from Poland and Italy) and the effects this would have on the culture and political control. There were also anti-Catholic secret societies that believed that the Pope would lead a new Armada to conquer the USA, with the Catholic recent immigrants as the fifth-column.
This carried on into the early 20th Century and as you say became part of the matrix of paranoia and status anxiety that fueled the resurgent KKK, alongside other prejudices like anti-Semitism, anti-Black, etc etc. There were also a bunch of anti-Catholic newspapers, including The Menace, out of Missouri, which had over a million readers.