Call us bleeding-heart liberals if you like, but there was a case at Falkirk Sheriff Court on Thursday that would have softened even the hardest heart towards the time-honoured plea in mitigation that ''Society is to blame''. (If ever it were tried, what a lot of offences would have to be taken into account!) A
16-year-old girl who admitted assaulting a man, whacking a table with a broom handle, and breaking some crockery, offered the unusual excuse that all her life she had been ''fed up'' with her Christian name, which did not suit her. That may sound a trivial and even impertinent defence, but surely not when you learn that her name was Happy.
It may be said that if one's parents choose to call one after one of the Seven Dwarfs, Happy goes lucky - it could have been Sleepy, Sneezy, Bashful, Grumpy, Dopey, or Doc - but it must be an almost inescapably self-defeating name to live up to, an irresistible temptation to fate and schoolmates. Assault, broom-handles, crockery . . . all things considered, we are amazed by the young woman's moderation. In France, where they order these things better, registrars can (and do) order a parent who proposes a fanciful name to go away and think of something sensible, such as Jacques, but in Britain one can name one's children anything one likes, be it Happy, Miserable, Praise-God Ananias Barebones, or the names of a whole football team. For anything such poor devils do, we say: society is to blame.
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