What's in a Name?
Our Inaugural Book Club Got Us Thinking
For our very first Wildflowers of London book club, we chose The Names by Florence Knapp. It turned out to be the perfect pick and not just because it's a beautifully written, heart-wrenching debut, but because it cracked open a conversation we didn't want to stop having.
The book, in brief
The Names follows Cora, a woman trapped in an abusive marriage in 1987, who must decide what to name her newborn son. The choice sits between three options: Gordon, her husband's name and his demand; Julian, her own quiet preference; and Bear, the hopeful suggestion of her young daughter, Maia. From that single moment, the novel splits into three parallel timelines, each tracing how one name reshapes an entire family's destiny across 35 years.
It's a sliding doors story. But it's also so much more than that.
What we talked about
Our discussion kept circling back to three big questions.
Is name bias conscious or unconscious? Most of us agreed we'd never sit down and deliberately judge someone by their name. And yet the evidence suggests it happens all the time. Studies have shown that CVs with non-white British names receive significantly fewer responses than identical CVs with white British names. Nobody sets out to discriminate. The bias often operates below the surface, quietly, doing its damage before anyone's even walked through the door.
Can your name actually change who you are? This is where the conversation got really interesting. Knapp's novel says yes and traces exactly how. The boy named Bear grows up freer, more confident, more loved. The boy named Gordon grows up in the shadow of his father's cruelty. Same family, same genetics, wildly different lives. But is that the name doing the work, or everything that came with it? The expectations, the treatment, the story other people told about him before he could tell his own?
Which brought us to the oldest question of all.
Nature or nurture? Are we born who we are, or are we shaped by the world around us? A name is one of the first things the world gives us. We don't choose it. We carry it into every classroom, every job interview, every introduction. It precedes us. And for many people, particularly women, and people of colour, it carries weight they never asked for.
Why it matters for Wildflowers
We built this collective because we believe in the power of honest conversation. The kind that doesn't wrap things up neatly. The kind that leaves you thinking on the way home.
Our first book club did exactly that.
The next one is coming. Watch this space.
Lx