Names matter because people matter – but we should lay off Gordon over this painful case

By Julian Ware-Lane / @warelane

I have been informed that the best way to tell a genuine Gordon Brown signature from a fake is that a genuine signature is unreadable. He has poor calligraphy – I can personally attest to this having sat next him once when he was making notes.

I am also a scribbler. Whereas the Prime Minister has poor eyesight I have no such excuse. One English teacher described my handwriting as “Martian script”.

One of my roles is as Minutes Secretary for the Southend Borough Football Combination. I end up with up to ten pages of badly written notes. Sometimes I have defeated even myself. I long for copperplate calligraphic skills, and perhaps one day I will make a serious attempt to acquire them.

I have also, on many occasions, suffered from the misspelling of my name. “Mr Warehouse”, “Julian Warehare”, and others have been my fate. Occasionally I am forced into misspelling it myself; LabourHome objects to the hyphen in my surname so I am registered as “Julian Ware Lane”. My hyphen is important.

If I spell my name over the phone I am often attempted to say ‘dash’ instead of ‘hyphen’ as I have on too many occasions to number have had my surname rendered with an apostrophe. On my father’s coffin it had “Cyril Ware’Lane”.

It gets worse when it comes to my initials. These are correctly put as “J. G. St.J. Ware-Lane”. I really cannot recall anyone getting it correct, and I sometimes give in and quote “J. G. S.” as my initials.

Does it matter? Well, today’s news about Gordon Brown’s error in writing Guardsman Jamie Janes’ name shows that it does.

As a parent I can attest to the great care taken over choosing names. We all take great pride in our children and their names and accomplishments. Names matter because people matter; and this is particularly pertinent in the case of the Janes family.

Yet, we should try not – in normal circusmtances – to get offended when our names are misspelt. Gone are the days when standard spelling and a relatively small pool of names meant that mistakes were few (and any genealogist will, in any case, tell you that prior to universal literacy your name’s spelling was decided by whomsoever recorded it).

Gordon Brown was right to apologise and perhaps should have taken extreme care in this case – but let’s accept that all of us are capable of such an error.