My surname is Whitworth. Not exactly a great secret, given that it’s printed at the bottom of every page on this website, but, y’know, some people don’t read all the way to the bottom. I like it as a name. It’s not too common, and it’s got an interesting heritage (I like to make the spurious claim that I’m a descendant of Joseph himself – we can track our family roots back up to the north at around the time of the Industrial Revolution, and according to Naomi who once watched a documentary on Joseph, I’m quite a lot like him. The fact of the matter is I have no idea if I really am related to him or not, but it’s nice to think I am).
My coming to Manchester, then, was sort of a homecoming for the Whitworth name (or it would have been if there weren’t already a bunch of us living here already). A proud name returning to the roots of its fame once again. Perhaps I could revolutionise, uh, something in the same way that Joseph revolutionised, well, everything? Or perhaps I could just start a long and confusing battle with the University administration systems who refused to believe that I could be both called Whitworth and living in Whitworth Park halls:
“Can I take your name and address, please?”
“Yes. My name is Chris Whitworth, and my address is Flat 13, Thorncliffe House, Whitworth Park…”
“Your name is Chris Whitworth, and you live in Whitworth Park?”
“That’s right.”
“You’re sure?”
“Er, yes. I think so. I mean, I could be wrong about my name, but I definitely live in Whitworth Park.”
“That’s quite a coincidence.”
“Yes, it is. And no-one has ever pointed it out before, ever. Really. Can we get on?”
Anyway. I no longer live anywhere Whitworth-related, so life – at least in that respect – is some small degree simpler now.
The thing I can’t get my head round, though, is hearing my name bandied about in public without thinking people are talking about me (what with Whitworth being a fairly uncommon name, and that). Thing is, there are a reasonably large number of things in Manchester named after the goodly Joseph – an art gallery, a road, numerous buildings, a (pretty decent) pub, and so forth – and so naturally the name tends to crop up in conversations. It doesn’t happen hugely often – certainly not often enough that I get used to it – but often enough that I quite often find myself turning round and double taking before I realise people aren’t talking about me.
I realise, of course, that this means I have an unbelievably huge ego and exaggerated sense of self-importance, but when they go around naming things after you all the time, what do you expect?
One day, maybe I’ll move to Whitworth itself and really confuse things…
I remember when Victoria Gray threatened to move to Victoria Hall in Victoria Park, while studying at the Victoria University of Manchester. Ouch.
And, hey, you’ve revolutionised some things! Beards, erm… oh, wasn’t it you who standardised the size of a nut and bolt?
That’s why I quite like being called Smith. Hardly anything is named after a Smith and there’s so darned many or us about that I don’t bat an eyelid when it gets mentioned in someone else’s conversation. I haven’t even had any of the ‘how do you spell that?’ or ‘no really, what is your name?’ jokes recently 🙂
With a name like mine, I never get anything like that. I just spend my whole life saying ‘No, really, it’s my name, there *is* a ‘h’ there. No I don’t know why, but it *is* there. Nono, *after* the ‘t’…’
You wouldn’t believe the number of people in Manchester who can’t spell Whitworth, either.
being called Sarah is great, sometimes. It nicely balances up for having a surname 9 letters long with only 2 vowels in it that no-one can pronounce or spell, and has nothing named after it South of the Border.