Troilus and Cressida
by Alex
I’m hip-deep in fieldnotes at the moment and thought this one was a bit too good to pass up:
Bob’s [not his real name] eldest daughter, home from grade 12 in Wabag, is Cressida. I asked “Cressida, like Troilus and Cressida?” incredulously. He responded “yeah, like Toyota Cressida. I was marketing director for Ela Motors and I ordered the first lot of Cressidas in Papua New Guiena when she was being born.” He also said that he named his son Napolean because he was always grabbing things and “claiming possesion.” His daughter Scholar he named beause he met his wife at college and the child was born while he was studying. The two choices for names were ‘campus’ and ‘scholar’, and he thought campus a bit akward.
This is not at all unusual. In the Solomon Islands I met a family that included such memorable figures as Florence Nightingale and Watermelon.