The Tiffany Efffect

Nicola here! As readers and writers we all know the importance of a character’s name. The right name can fit perfectly with our view of that person; the wrong one can completely pull us out of a story. With historical fiction it’s even trickier because not only do names have to fit the character but they also need to be historically correct. Nothing breaks my enjoyment more than a Regency heroine called Tiffany.

And that is where I am wrong, as I discovered a couple of weeks ago when I heard about “The Tiffany Effect.” The Tiffany Effect is the belief that something is more modern than it actually is. So, for example, central heating could be an example of The Tiffany effect if you thought it was a modern invention and not a technology originally introduced by the Ancient Greeks and Romans . Or glasses, which were first worn in 1290.

I thought that the name Tiffany simply had to be a 20^th century introduction, popularised in 1961 by the film “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” which was based on the book by Truman Capote.  I vaguely knew that Tiffany had been a surname before that – Tiffany & Co. the jewellers was founded in 1837 by Charles Lewis Tiffany.  So I thought I was clear on the timeline. But it turns out I was wrong because the name Tiffany was recorded in 1200 as a first name, traditionally given to girls born on 6^th January, the Feast of the Epiphany.  The spelling in Old French was “Tifinie” and it derives from a Greek word, Theophaneia, which originally mean “manifestation of god.”  By 1600, the name Tiffany appears in English. By this time it was also the name for a light, gauzy sort of material (like the one in the picture) as well as a first name and a surname.

I’m similarly afflicted by name prejudice over the number of heroes in historical romance who are called Shane or Wade or other names that sound too modern to me. As the name Shane was very popular when I was a child in the 1970s, I assumed it had only come into usage in the middle of the 20th century but with names it’s seldom as simple as that. Shane as a masculine name derives for the Gaelic Sean and thus from the name John. It is first recorded in the 17^th century. Shane as a female name comes from a completely different source, the Yiddish name Shayna. As for “Wade,” his name derives from the Early English for a ford and was a popular given name in the medieval period. He was also a giant of folklore and there are plenty of places still named after him.

When I started looking into name derivations, several others struck me as particularly interesting. One was Beverly, which again I thought was a 20^th century name. However since it derives from the “beaver meadow” and beavers became extinct in England in 1526 it has to be much older than that. It became fashionable as a male name first, in the 19^th century. Beverly, Evelyn and a number of others became unisex names. So too Andrea and Nicola; both are male names in Italy whilst Nicola is a female name in the UK and Germany. Again, I assumed that the English version was a 20^th century invention but again I was wrong. When I was reading about King John and Magna Carta I came across Nicola de la Haye, the castellan of Lincoln Castle, a formidable woman born in about 1165 who was also sheriff of Lincolnshire.

Which all goes to prove that you could probably make a case for using almost any name you chose in a book. Of course names go in and out of fashion; we all know that most children in Tudor England were called Joan, Elizabeth, Alice, Anne, or John, William, Henry, Edward… But if you take into account family surnames used as first names, and regional variations - such as Drake or Loveday in places like Cornwall – almost anything could work. Fashion in names can so often be fascinating; before the influence of celebrities like Kylie there was the example of Oliver Cromwell: Oliver had been a very popular boys name up until the 17^th century but such was the unpopularity of Cromwell that it took until Dickens’ Oliver Twist in the 19^th century to bring it back into fashion again!

Do you have a classic or an unusual sort of a name? Do you know it’s derivation? And how do you feel about the Tiffany Effect and names that don’t sound right in a historical novel? Should any name be acceptable or does something that sounds anachronistic even if it isn't pull you out of the story?