Naming Oliver Twist (Today)

Oliver Twist, the orphan in Dickens’ eponymous novel, famously got his name from an alphabetical list kept by Mr. Bumble, the “beadle,” who ran the orphanage.

I’ll bet you don’t know, though, the names of the orphans before and after Oliver. Those poor things were christened Swubble and Unwin.

I’ve always wondered how a system like this would work if it involved real names, and not the fanciful things that Dickens loved. So, here you are …

Now, what I’ve done is simply take the most popular first names and surnames (in the US of today) and put them together, starting with A and ending with Z. To avoid alliteration, though, I’ve offset the first and last names by one letter. 

Oh, there are also simply no decent boy names that begin with U and Y or girl names that begin with X. So, I’ve eliminated those, along with all surnames beginning with X.

Boys First	Boys Last	Girls First	Girls Last
Andrew	Brown	Abigail	Baker
Brandon	Clark	Brianna	Campbell
Christopher	Davis	Chloe	Daniels
Daniel	Evans	Destiny	Edwards
Francis	Green	Faith	Gray
Gabriel	Harris	Grace	Hall
Hunter	Ingram	Hannah	Irwin
Isaiah	Johnson	Isabella	Jackson
Jacob	King	Jessica	Kelly
Kevin	Lee	Kayla	Lewis
Logan	Miller	Loren	Moore
Michael	Nelson	Madison	Nichols
Nicholas	Owen	Natalie	O'Brien
Owen	Phillips	Olivia	Parker
Patrick	Quinn	Paige	Quick
Quentin	Robinson	Quinn	Roberts
Ryan	Smith	Rachel	Stewart
Samuel	Taylor	Samantha	Thomas
Thomas	Underwood	Taylor	Upton
Victor	Williams	Uma	Vaughn
William	Young	Victoria	Wilson
Xavier	Adams	Whitney	Yates
Zachary	Bell	Yasmin	Zimmerman

So I guess that means that Oliver would probably have been Samuel Taylor, or perhaps Owen Phillips.  Messrs. Swubble and Unwin? Ryan Smith and Thomas Underwood. Much better, don’t you think?

 

Please sir, may I have a better name?

More name stuff:

• What's in a presidential name?
• You named your child what?
• North Carolina surnames
• Why so many Smiths?