LIFE, in its many nefarious ways, works upon us subliminally. We are heir to a million influences.
This probably starts with our parents, then their families, then their friends, then other children we meet, fellow school pupils, teachers and so forth. All will probably have an effect, even merely as learning experiences: avoid, befriend, disinfect and so forth.
But the influences upon us are not merely human, though they are mostly human-engendered. Music, for example, may influence us, as might television programmes. Today’s little ones bung their slavering faces in front of computer screens and can tweet before they walk, so Lord alone knows how they are going to turn out. Economical, I expect, with words and possibly truth.
READ MORE: St Andrews University research shows British street names 'make residents feel less Scottish'
Then, of course, there are books. Difficult to estimate their influence. You pick your books rather than vice-versa, so for the most part they probably just reinforce your prejudices. However, they may have had an influence when we were bairns. That’s why we like roly-poly countryside, wee villages, church spires, red doors, flowers and fluffy animals.
I grew up in a book-free household, and everything I learned about English outwith school I got from The People’s Friend, particularly the rhyming couplets that accompanied a cartoon strip at the back.
In the absence of anything else, I also read knitting patterns, leading to my current two-ply writing style in which I start off pontificating about the underlying rate of inflation and conclude with a balaclava or Arran-style pullover.
Before I have you all in stitches (looks out on a sea of stern faces), my slow-burning bombshell of an introduction brings us to this week’s topic: a study by the University of St Andrews that purports to show the influence street names can have on their residents.
In particular, it was averred, they can indicate how Scottish you feel. Thus, Unionist or, you know, “British” street names such as “Queen”, “Royal”, “Regent” or “London” might make folk less likely to define themselves as Scottish. How interesting.
Edinburgh has all these examples and worse. The streets in one small area at the heart of the “Scottish” capital’s centre are Hanover, Frederick, George, Charlotte and Princes (after George III’s two eldest sons; he had previously objected to St Giles Street). There’s even a Cumberland Street a bit further north.
To be fair, I think the idea of being influenced by your street name is a bit of a stretch, otherwise people in the last named might go out and bayonet anyone they find in a horizontal position.
READ MORE: St Andrews University research shows British street names 'make residents feel less Scottish'
And, while I think it is named after a later duke than the “Butcher”, they might still want to wipe out Gaelic and complain about anyone wearing Scottish national dress to a war memorial.
But, in truth, it’s people who influence street names rather than vice-versa. Such names tell us more about the society that built and named the streets. In the 1980s, and even into the 1990s, new developments of egg-box flats would often be given names like Cholmondley Grange, Chester-le-Street Street, and Poshbuttock Mews.
I always thought it must be an embarrassment to live at such an address, particularly if anyone ever came to visit you, whereupon they felt like the wizard Gandalf in the home of Bilbo Baggins, banging their head on the ceiling lampshades and ducking under the doors.
The idea that names might be a bit more Scottish caused an internet frenzy, with our brothers and sisters from south of the Border mocking Scots words and telling us to get back in our box. Gaelic, in particular, came in for its usual booting, aided and abetted as per by the “proud Scot buts” and their penchant for over-generous deployment of exclamation marks.
Presumably, they would like to see streets in the Scottish capital called “Lady Di Street!!!!” or “Margaret Thatcher Circus!!!”
Somebody wondered if living in Glebe Street would make residents behave like a character from the Broons and, apart from the fact that it led to a new bout of hectoring that neither Glebe nor Broon were Scottish (too tedious; don’t ask), this was an interesting point.
But which Broon? Hen or Joe? Maggie or Daphne? The study also prompted an esteemed colleague to wonder what it must be like to live in Glenn Close. These are questions that are beyond my pay grade to consider.
READ MORE: St Andrews University research shows British street names 'make residents feel less Scottish'
I do think, however, that there might be something legitimate in the deployment of more words like Close and Vennel, whatever their ultimate etymological origin, and certainly fewer of these aspirational, faux-Sussex atrocities that we had to suffer in the recent past.
In the meantime, this has been Robert – sorry, Rabbie – McNeil, reporting from Glendrookit Wynd, just off Mucklebiggin Brae, in the kenspeckle capital of Scotlandshire.
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