Names
Wendy Cope * Track #1 On Serious Concerns
Download "Names"
Album Serious Concerns
- #1Names
Wendy Cope
- #2Advice to Young Women
Wendy Cope
- #3After the Lunch
Wendy Cope
- #4Noises in the Night
Wendy Cope
- #5So Much Depends
Wendy Cope
- #6I Worry
Wendy Cope
- #7Magnetic
Wendy Cope
- #8Bloody Men
Wendy Cope
- #9An Argument with Wordsworth
Wendy Cope
- #10The Aerial
Wendy Cope
- #11Two Cures for Love
Wendy Cope
- #12Legacy
Wendy Cope
- #13The Orange
Wendy Cope
Names by Wendy Cope
Performed by
Wendy CopeAbout
This is a seemingly simple poem in everyday colloquial language, but it explores some serious themes. These include aging, life phases, time passing, but most importantly identity.
The tone, however, is light-hearted, and the character of the subject, her warmth and friendliness, comes over vividl...
Names Annotated
She was Eliza for a few weeks
when she was a baby –
Eliza Lily. Soon it changed to Lil.
Later she was Miss Steward in the baker’s shop
And then ‘my love’, ‘my darling’, Mother.
Widowed at thirty, she went back to work
As Mrs Hand. Her daughter grew up,
Married and gave birth.
Now she was Nanna. ‘Everybody
Calls me Nanna,’ she would say to visitors.
And so they did – friends, tradesmen, the doctor.
In the geriatric ward
They used the patients’ Christian names.
‘Lil,’ we said, ‘or Nanna,’
But it wasn’t in her file
And for those last bewildered weeks
She was Eliza once again