Every Tom, Dick and Harry

I had a friend tell me the other day that his father planned on registering his brother as Thomas Richard Harold so that he’d be every Tom, Dick and Harry. Apparently the lady in the registry office didn’t find this amusing and put a stop to it. Whether that’s true or not remains to be proved, but it gives me a chance to talk about alternative names.

Aside from Thomas, an alternative way to get to Tom could be Bartholomew.

Bartholomew is the full name of Bart Simpson, but don’t let that put you off the name. Bartholomew is a Hebrew name meaning son of Talmai. The name Talmai means abounding in furrows. Another famed bearer aside form the cartoon character is St. Bartolomew who was one of Jesus’ apostles – but he wasn’t strictly called Bartholomew, he was infact a Nathaniel.

As for Dick, I’m thinking about the slightly more familiar name of Frederick. He’s the English form of the Old German name Frithuric, which means peace and is another name brought to England by the Normans. Nowadays though, the French tend to spell this name sans the final k as Frederic (accent optional). There have been nine King of Denmark called Frederick, which is a pretty impressive tally. However, I would voice concern over using Dick as a nickname in this day and age.

I had plenty of ideas for Harry, but we’re going less-oft heard with Harrier. I was considering talking about Harper, but since we’ve previously mentioned the name of the blog, the name we’re looking at instead is Harrier. It’s the name of a bird of prey, and the name itself derives from Middle English. There are two distincts types of Harriers: the marsh harrier and the hen harrier. Perhaps a better known link for people is the British military aircraft called a Harrier Jump Jet which was named after the bird. Whilst I think Spitfire is a push, I find myself thinking about why I’ve never considered the name Harrier before. Granted, the name is pretty similar in sound to Harriet – the feminine form of Henry.